Desolation Photography Thread (aka Ruins Porn)

I'm really excited to start this thread bc I really love desolation photography. It seems especially hot right now, and ripe for discussion. Probably the discussion to have right upfront is whether photographing these sites can be beautiful, artistic, etc, or whether (and whether?) it is exploitive. As I understand it, the case for the latter is that beyond the range of the camera are the real human beings who have suffered, and communities that have been decimated. The case for the former, I think, is that these communities and people are often marginalized and these photographs can do their part in bringing forward their stories. Also that there's a gorgeous aesthetic associated w/ these photos - this ahistorical space of nostalgia and utopia.

Anyway, I've got a ton more to say about this stuff, but here are some articles that I think are really interesting.

Joann Greco: The Psychology of Ruin Porn - http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/01/psychology-ruin-porn/886/ - lays out a bunch of these political/aesthetic issues in a very accessible way. I personally think the images in the story are a terrible example of desolation photography -- a little too airbrushed, photoshopped, some clearly staged (an issue also interestingly related to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men which I think is a relevant precursor to this).

A lot of this writing has focused on Detroit such as Jerry Herron's "The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit": http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-forgetting-machine-a-history-of-detroit/31848/ - which I thought was a really beautiful article that deals with a lot of these issues, and is also apparently the first of a few pieces he's going to be writing on the theme for Places this year. One thing I thought he said that was very striking (referring to the conversion of the Michigan Theater to the parking garage):

But the improvisation of the Michigan Theater is powerful because it doesn’t remove people from the city; on the contrary, it involves them dramatically in the production of their own situation. The ruin of urban space becomes a participatory drama: memory versus forgetting, the city dead or the city alive. The trick is seeing both at once, and comprehending them as equally true and mutually implicated.

John Patrick Leary had a piece last year, "Detroitism," in Guernica: http://www.guernicamag.com/features/2281/leary_1_15_11/

Finally, I only just started looking at it, but Sarah Wanechak is doing a series on "The Atemporality of 'Ruin Porn'": http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/01/12/the-atemporality-of-ruin-porn-part-i-the-carcass/

Really, ground zero for this stuff seems to be (hoax?) Elena's trips through Chernobyl which were the first photos I saw in the Internet that seemed to touch on a lot of these themes. Really interesting in terms of authenticity, fabrication, and the ethics of devastation. Also, closely linked to thanotourism which is pretty interesting too and maybe qualifies for its own thread (though I'd love to discuss thanotourism stuff here). Anyway, Elena link is: http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

There are (were?) some livejournal communities that used to specialize in this kind of photography, tho I admittedly haven't checked in on them in awhile. There are also some ILX threads that are relevant:

Abandoned Amusement/Fun Parks
Abandoned malls
ITT, ancient RUINS, ruined cities, oh look on my works, ye mighty and despair!

The reason I felt particularly inspired to start this thread now is that -- without going too much into details -- I visited a shuttered refinery yesterday as a part of my job. While I was there I took a bunch of photos and collected about 25 that I thought were particularly beautiful. The refinery was shut down because of profitability issues and pretty much devastated the local economy and community which relied on the refinery for employment. The area is particularly economically depressed, and the refinery had fallen into disrepair. I don't want to get into the details about why I went (maybe in a few months or so), but I do want to share the photos with you guys. I'm just trying to figure out a somewhat discrete way to do so and then I'll post them on this thread.

Anyway -- critical theory, photography theory, just pictures that fit this thread description, discussion of ethics, thanotourism, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only person on ILX really interested in this.

Also maybe relevant is Errol Morris' series in the NYT on photography: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock/

He specifically discusses Let Us Now Praise Famous Men here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock-part-3

JAMES CURTIS: My favorite example is Walker Evans moving furniture around inside the sharecroppers’ cabins in Hale County, Alabama. I was talking to Alan Trachtenberg [a professor of American history at Yale]. And Alan said, “Well, when your article on Evans came out, I was mad as hell.” And I said, “Well, what were you mad about?” And he said, “Well, what difference does it make if he moved furniture around inside the sharecroppers’ cabins?” And I said, “Because Evans has been regarded as the high apostle of documentary honesty, and he said he never did things like that.” And afterwards, Trachtenberg replied, “Oh hell, we all know he was a liar.”

great evans story!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mobileohm/sets/72057594081985998/

you already posted all the links I was gonna post

I think that this is going to become an increasingly prominent hobby as more of our built environment goes to shit / easier than ever to be an amateur photographer

I'm not sure I think there's any moral problem w/ it outside of the 'people who want to see detroit just for the misery' - and even that's a form of tourism the city wouldn't have otherwise.

http://www.derelictlondon.com/

had no idea the Chernobyl thing was fake tho, that's interesting. (~experiences internet nostalgia~)

Well, the entire name 'ruin porn' (which I hate ftr) implies a kind of exploitation and anesthetization towards these economic/environmental calamities.

Ah, I'm glad you decided to start this thread in the end. Some interesting stuff there that I'll have to take the time to look through. I'd also recommend Sophie Thomas on fragments and ruins as an interesting theoretical standpoint: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Romanticism_and_visuality.html?id=Hg9EpSYZ-vAC. I saw her present an open seminar on that which got me very energised about follies (which are an entirely different thing, but theoretically hella exciting).

I also had a look for the thread on submerged towns but couldn't find it - closest I came was this: Pictures of sinking/sunken ships

Which is sort of related in the 'human manufacture thwarted and decayed by nature' sense.

Well, the entire name 'ruin porn' (which I hate ftr) implies a kind of exploitation and anesthetization towards these economic/environmental calamities.

― Mordy, Tuesday, January 24, 2012 4:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

probably the biggest takeaway I have from sontag is that a camera beautifies everything you put in front of it

I think there are several things at work here. First off digital photography means that you can have nothing more than your phone and get pics. Our dystopian future hasn't arrived quite as quickly as popular culture might have implied so it has to created, as it were. Exploring derelict buildings is something that some ppl have always enjoyed. Mortality is kind of mesmerizing.

I don't think you can exploit a long-gone calamity, tho I guess that depends on the context and in some of these cases there are still people suffering - people in detroit being the obv example. otoh bringing attention to the bigger issues at hand is always a good thing, even if it's for the wrong reason. I think.

a camera beautifies everything you put in front of it

Gingrich must be at near Medusa levels of hideosity irl then

Well, the entire name 'ruin porn' (which I hate ftr) implies a kind of exploitation and anesthetization towards these economic/environmental calamities.

― Mordy, Tuesday, January 24, 2012 9:43 PM

can Ruin Porn help?

http://rustwire.com/2011/12/27/things-are-broke-can-ruin-porn-help/

Michael, I think that's a great point and one Herron seems to be echoing in his Places piece in the very beginning. He quotes Edward Gibbon imagining the 14th century poet Petrarch first encountering the ruins of Rome:

When Petrarch first gratified his eyes with a view of those monuments whose scattered fragments so far surpass the most eloquent descriptions, he was astonished at the supine indifference of the Romans themselves; he was humbled rather than elated by the discovery that ... a stranger of the Rhône [i.e., Petrarch himself] was more conversant with these antiquities than the nobles and natives of the metropolis.

And he suggests that our gaze towards Detroit is the same thing:

It might seem self-aggrandizing to say that the post-industrial and post-millennial metropolis of Detroit works in much the same way; but it does. I can think of no other American city that feels at once familiar historically, and also alien. Familiar because this is the place where the life we all live — cars, strip malls, shopping centers, freeways, exurbia — was invented; alien because nobody here seems bothered that so many recognizable signs of wealth and culture — things that really matter elsewhere — have been so thoroughly abandoned, as if they had suddenly lost all meaning.

Re: "Exploring derelict buildings is something that some ppl have always enjoyed. Mortality is kind of mesmerizing."

I know I've done it since childhood. I just didn't take photos.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

-sontag

obviously here, there's a shortcut!

Also, the exploitive side of 'porn' is kind of a red-herring. Something-porn just means compelling imagery or footage of whatever subject. If anything, ruin porn is more akin to graffiti artists making use of disused places, though arguably more benignly or at least less invasively.

mordy, you've seen this thread right

good places to set up a colony of noise dudes

That central station in Detroit does rather break my heart, though. I very much doubt that architecture is going to make a comeback.

I do think a lot of the lighting gimmicks, framing/staging and stuff is really kinda gross. Well, not gross. But partially what moves me about a lot of this photography is that it has been untouched and the entropy has happened without being helped by the viewer. (Distinct maybe from stuff like graffiti, neglect, etc that is human-caused but not a part of the subjective gaze.)

I would like to point out that a lot of photography of this sort has been pretty heavily massaged in photoshop afterwards!

Contrasts and lighting effects are sometimes rich in that environment, though

not really unique to this form of photography tho

Yes, for sure. And I understand that some editing is necessary (I'm not a total purist) but the photos in that Atlantic article I thought were particularly egregious.

I am not so troubled by photoshop if the primary purpose of something isn't documentary and a good image is a good image.

I mean 'Children of Men' wasn't documentary but the art direction/cinematography was quite compelling imho

how much of the enjoyment do you attribute to the belief that this kind of photography is strictly documentary, that the viewer is more stimulated by the idea that these images represent of ruin, decay, decrepitude, and how much of that enjoyment do you impute to the actual aesthetic qualities of the photograph itself?

dayo, I'm not sure I fully understand your question.

do you like the photograph for the idea it represents or because it is pleasing to the eye?

I think all photography is still representation no matter its versimilitude or the sincerity of the photographer

Hopefully I like both

verisimiluity is in the eye of the beholder

I was giving serious consideration to going to Pripyat' last year and decided, in the end, not to. Part of that was a sense of unease at some of the kitschy elements of most tours, part because i do find ruins like these beautiful and i wasn't really comfortable wandering around the site of an event that destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of people simply to get an aesthetic kick out of the aftermath.

I ended up regretting it a little. It's probably quite easy to caricature what we think our reactions are going to be in these situations. The reality is always going to be more complex. None of these photos, or excursions, can really divorce the visual from the emotional. Might go this year if i end up in Kyiv again.

I guess this is an interesting question for me because it seems the enjoyment of ruins photography rests on the ground that it is photography done in a documentary mode - and also because it seems that at least part of the enjoyment comes from the fact that these photographs are aesthetically beautiful, but if that's true...

xp

A picture of skull on desk and a picture of skull on desk underlit with creepy light are still participating in the same momento mori meme. One may be more representative of ordinary life and one may be more moody. Whichever is more effective depends largely on the expectations and aethetics of the observer. If you like or don't mind it being pretty too, it's an added bonus.

and does desolation/ruins photography somehow fall in the same category of disaster/dark tourism?

The French guy I linked upthread is all into cool effects and is largely exploiting the environment for color and light and contrast. The ppl whose photographs (unlinked, alas) of that disused subway station in Manhattan have taken all kinds of different photos. I don't mind historical or documentary approaches, too, esp if you give me some written or audio context. I just have to like the work.

I know that sounds like 'I don't know what art is but I know what I like' but that's not only partly true to me but also entireley beside the point for me. My art critiques tend more to dialogue than exposition and I like to think that they're never finished or that they're only finished when I can concretely tell you why I no longer enjoy something.

and does desolation/ruins photography somehow fall in the same category of disaster/dark tourism?

Kind of a broad question. If you fly out to Mogadishu to take wild photos of jagged, broken buildings, I might think you a little insufferable compared to a photojournalist. Might, but not necessarily depending on the work. Salgado has an ability to make me both gasp and squirm, for example.

Some 20-something with a cool camera and tumblr who wants to break inot the local closed hospital isn't going to meet with much opprobrium from me and I don't care if he evokes despair at time's arrow, regret over resources no longer available, amusement at 40 year old color schemes, or just gets some really good horror movie shots or would be arty shots.

salgado is a good example for me of a photographer whose aesthetic sense overwhelms the documentary sense

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/photographs-of-abandoned-places_n_1197538.html

^milwaukee

something about these kind of pics irks me, the detachment from the real social problems that lead to things being in that state

RUINS PR0N OF MY OWN!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardgin/sets/72157608541428456/with/2989403149/

Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

This is a good point but the slice of time apsect intrigues me for another reason. Many photos are genius not only for their composition or their subject matter but also because you can study a very specific slice of time and sometimes those slices of time tell you more than minutes and hours that surround them.

er, shit, not entirely the right link xp

the detachment from the real social problems that lead to things being in that state

I thoroughly understand that kind of reaction

so, I think one reason why ruins photography doesn't engage my interest that much is that it always seems much less 'grand' or significant than the actual subject of the photograph, in the same way that a landscape photography often fails to approximate the majesty of the scene it depicts*.

I love photographs that manage to amplify an ordinary event, a commonplace event, to levels beyond what that event has any right to reasonable evoke. ruins photography seems to be the exact opposite - the whimpering ghost-image of an experience best had in person.

*I make exceptions for truly exceptional landscape photographers, like ansel adams, whose photographs possess such a strength of their own that one has no need to ever believe that the scene depicted actually ever existed in the first place.

http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/204137/slide_204137_602435_huge.jpg?1326376071&1327444510397

Some of these photos I find less tragic, though. This was a coke and gas plant in Milwaukee that closed in '83. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” But don't depair too much. Seeing empty apartment blocks or boarded up homes is bad but seeing a business that maybe wasn't doing so well in the face of competition or newer technology isn't as likely to elicit a tear or as much sorrow in me.

whose photographs possess such a strength of their own that one has no need to ever believe that the scene depicted actually ever existed in the first place.

They did exist but he also manipulated the hell out of his photos

ghost-image of an experience best had in person

Hence the porn in the name?

hah yeah - I had that same thought as well

They did exist but he also manipulated the hell out of his photos

― Quand le déshonneur est public, il faut que la vengeance soit (Michael White), Tuesday, January 24, 2012 5:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

yeah Adams was the quintessential darkroom geek. but that's part of my point - the mode of aesthetic representation took his images out of the documentary realm entirely, whereas I think a lot of landscape photography still relies on the idea of "this is a place that you too can visit someday" to incite pleasure in its viewers

the mode of aesthetic representation took his images out of the documentary realm entirely,

I lived in Yosemite as a kid and I've been to many of the CA places Adams shot and I kind of agree with my dad's take on this. Compared to the number of stops in human vision, it's only by manipulation that you can 'document' the beauty that Adams saw. Film stock and lenses in his time just couldn't do it on their own.

So... I put 25 of the photos on flickr. nb I used an iPhone to take these photos and have no photo editing skills so these are straight off my phone. I'll post a few here and you can see the rest at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69594680@N04/sets/72157629019321115/ I'm not sure how long I'll keep these up. (Hopefully indefinitely but there may be cause to remove them.) So I apologize for the broken links in advance.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6757659925_57648737c7.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7022/6757665151_a055ea3ae4.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7019/6757665721_8f9f09a5aa.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7013/6757666781_79cce240e2.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7161/6757669703_6ab09c5467.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7005/6757670277_5a6b3f2e9e.jpg

really distressing to see crucial safety information (jesus christ emergency suction) added as a seemingly breezy handwritten afterthought

another classic thread: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here (pic thread)

That's the one I kept looking for before I started this thread!

Oh man, stoked for this thread!

“This is coming to you,” declares Tommy Stevens, owner of a blues bar in Detroit. By that he means the decay, deflation, and defeat of the middle class that has comprised the last decade of Detroit’s history. That painful story and its meaning for the rest of America is the subject of Detropia, an important, heartbreaking, and yet still occasionally hilarious documentary directed by Heather Ewing and Rachel Grady, which premiered this past week at Sundance.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/01/25/detropia_documentary_paints_a_bleak_picture_of_former_city_of_the_future.html

oh the guys who did jesus camp, 16th & delaware, interestingly

my friend cosmo's sister zoe is an amazing photographer - in a lot of ways i feel like she comes closer to an arbus vibe than almost anyone else has but i don't want to diminish her achievements by pointing out obvious historical influences cuz her work resembles a lot of american photographers its an american kind of thing - and her storefront/blight/factory stuff in general is really strong. though that's not all she does. she has a big show right now at the philadelphia museum of art. i can't make the show but i bought the book from the museum. it's amazing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27822510@N00/45866047/in/photostream/

those are great scott

Wow -- I definitely want to check out her exhibit. Maybe this weekend...

her flickr is obviously not all, you know, gallery/museum stuff. its all over the place. i like seeing alternate shots though of some of the photos in the book.

yeah, you should go!

there were billboards all over the city. and the front of the museum even!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7IYoGErnl0c/Tw-1DWxkLQI/AAAAAAAAHRg/J6nxqpo5J58/s1600/378664_10151149402650285_540605284_22160701_1165643134_n.jpg

matress photo probably her most famous photo.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/bt_assets/system/idea_thumbnails/42046/original/Image_11-edit.jpg?1327003183

oh man totally checking that exhibit out next time I'm in philly

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7164/6551786941_9909458cbd.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevensiegel/sets/72157626376913418/with/6551786941/

A half-deconstructed church in Logan Square, about three months ago.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6117/6268526542_7ac73debcc_z.jpg

ooh baby:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094823/New-York-leper-colony-Eerie-pictures-inside-abandoned-world-lost-island.html

I think most ruins porn is too hi-fi for me

pumped to read this thread because i have been cruising around duluth and while it is not exactly "ruins porn" there is definitely a beautiful austerity up in this piece. like i think i could just walk around port terminal (well, i did actually) and west duluth and grab an interesting pic every 20m or so

I do not live in the best of places right now and my friend's old gf used to always want to take ruin porn pics of it and it made me sad

actually i guess i am more of a desolation guy than a ruins guy

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7003/6825920531_1a038de1d3_b.jpg
Alcatraz stairwell by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

not quite as ruined or desolate Alcatraz:
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5105/5673377550_f35f2c94cb_b.jpg
Alcatraz (visiting area?) by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5109/5672192544_4d97e257cc_b.jpg
Alcatraz 8x10 by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5228/5605437128_542b5c50f5_b.jpg
Alcatraz Wall by celluloidpropaganda, on Flickr

Milo all those photos are so so great

Here in Ireland we have our own variation on ruins porn - photos of unfinished housing estates or buildings that will never be finished thanks to the economic crisis. blum blum: http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=ghost%20estates&gbv=2&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=375l3171l0l3561l16l14l0l3l3l0l234l1468l3.7.1l11l0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

I love visiting ruins from the ancient world - Pompeii, Rome, Tyre, Masada, to name some that spring quickly to mind. Modern world ruins are interesting in their own way, but maybe a bit depressing.

Ireland also has this:

http://www.abandonedireland.com/

plenty of those in america too, dirty vicar

There may be plenty, iatee, but I think some of the boom hit Europe pretty hard, especially those countries w/o long histories of such booms. Coming into Madrid from the airport last year I was a little shocked at how much empty commercial property there was and how many unfinished (and quite ambitious) developments one can see from the freeway alone.

You know where this is really apparent in the US? Florida. I saw at least 10 started but unfinished and empty developments in the city where my parents now live. The weirdest of which was just a partially constructed gateway to a complex in an otherwise empty field. Very eerie.

yeah I think the fact that ireland is a considerably smaller place makes the boom a lot more visible whereas most of us don't regularly see the scope of the empty developments in vegas, florida, etc.

Madrid is actually pretty crazy for having a huge volume of unbuilt projects. I've been spending a lot of the last month on a project mapping this area:
http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=40.364335,-3.594589&hl=en&ll=40.368814,-3.593602&spn=0.03237,0.047979&sll=40.367735,-3.609953&sspn=0.064741,0.095959&mra=mift&mrsp=1&sz=14&t=h&z=15

And if you zoom out you can see more similar developments.

(Way xpost) Scott, I've long loved that "Mattress Flip" photo. I was mistakenly under the impression it was shot in New Orleans; I think I've seen a similar shot from there.

If anyone's interested, the whole story of that photo is here:

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/Zoe-Strauss-Mattress-Flip-Laurence-Boo-Rose-Philadelphia-Museum-of-Art.html

In Ireland - there is a strong idea here that when you have a lot of money you should sink it in property. Even if you don't have a lot of money, sinking it in property is seen as a most excellent idea. During the beforetime, when people had a lot of money, there was a building bonanza, as new found wealth (and mortgages) started being converted into bricks and mortar. And then in the strange last phase of the boom, when the economy turned into a giant ponzi scheme based on construction and property, the building boom continued.

I gather Spain's crash is largely based around a similar property bubble, at least partly triggered by Irish people buying stupid property there because they had run out of things to buy at home. oh well.

there is a strong idea here that when you have a lot of money you should sink it in property. Even if you don't have a lot of money, sinking it in property is seen as a most excellent idea.

here that's just called 'the american dream'

Yeah, that sounds p much like what we see around the states. There was plenty of construction going on right after the crash that got converted to vacant lots and half-finished condos. Also, lots of poor saps who are one of two or three owners in an otherwise vacant condo complex.

I don't know if this was posted upthresd, but these are amazing: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1882089,00.html

Also, while this place has been turned into a museum, they've done a wonderful job of maintaining the ruins of thie penetentary: http://www.easternstate.org/explore/flickr

Visit if you're in Philly. Totally worth it.

i JUST came here to post that gallery. weird. okay, maybe not weird. those other prison pics made me think of it.

that place is truly the king of spookytown

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7033/6819646983_5bf7199401.jpg

there is a flickr group for this sort of thing:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/47799877@N00/

xpost to iatee
that kind of stuff literally has me terrified, as a potential first time home buyer :s

Edward Burtynsky to thread.

http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/WORKS/Breaking_Ground/Tailings/Nickel_Tailings_34.jpghttp://www.fotofest.org/ff2004/images/burtynsky_02.jpg
Nickel Tailings # 34 Shipbreaking #4 Chittagong Bangladesh

http://photographyforagreenerplanet.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/004-olf_19a_03_oil.jpg
Oil Fields #19a, Belridge, California

Nickel Tailings looks rather pretty.

wow, those are amazing

hmm, I thought of burtynsky as being more interested in grand scale and repetition than ruins

oh wow, mcclellan and 5th is about 10 blocks from where I grew up

sexy photoes

Guardian piece on stuff around the subject. Kind of a summary of other writings, some interesting avenues to follow.

Thanks for that Emily, loved reading it!

That was indeed an interesting article. I like it when people connect the current fascination with ruin porn to 18th century ruin porn. But maybe there's a sense that it took a while for America to develop a ruin porn aesthetic because it took America a while to, well, develop ruins? Both in the architectural sense and in the ending of empire sense.

Is the Owen Hatherley book mentioned in the piece any good? Has anyone read it?

http://www.lefigaro.fr/immobilier/2012/03/15/05002-20120315DIMWWW00400-tour-du-monde-des-villes-fantomes.php

These do not quite fit in with the idea of the thread, but I thought they were so striking that they should be posted here:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/03/bloom-28000-potted-flowers-installed-at-the-massachusetts-mental-health-center/

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BLOOM-by-Anna-Schuleit-Pink-Heather.jpg

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BLOOM-by-Anna-Schuleit-Blue-Hallway.jpg

Obviously constructed, which I've already said doesn't tend to appeal so much to me. But the good ones of these I think suggest a kind of utopian future at odds w/ a lot of the pictures in this thread -- this suggestion that nature reclaiming building doesn't have to be morbid but could theoretically be striking + beautiful. The worst of these are kinda falling on the wrong side of the corny side, but I like the two above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXA6imo0Soc

this is magnificent

related:
http://www.soane.org/exhibitions/visions_of_ruin
"This exhibition is the first to explore 'the cult of the ruin', a phenomenon of 18th and early 19th century Europe"

Very cool sounding exhibition. If you go, plz take pictures!

http://vimeo.com/3387485

I think this kinda fits in here...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/nyregion/mitch-waxman-tour-guide-to-decay.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1

This is my old neighbourhood! And it's a bloke I used to know a long time ago, doing something v v cool in it!

HIs blog is kind of amazing, mostly because he doesn't seem to be doing it in an exploitative desolation porn kind of way, but as someone who is very active in his neighbourhood, trying to do something about the absolutely staggering industrial waste there. Anyway, just wanted to bring it to your attention. Especially in case any New Yorkers are interested in joining him - he has always been an *excellent* spinner of yarns.

http://newtownpentacle.com/

oh yeah I read that blog

Ruins of the 2008 Olympics:

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/07/beijings-olympic-ruins/2499/

http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2012/10/30/the-strange-allure-of-disaster-porn/

ht noise hq thread:
http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/04/14/the-33-most-beautiful-abandoned-places-in-the-world/

http://www.boredpanda.com/abandoned-places/ unsurprisingly some overlap

On a related note, one may read The Pleasure of Ruins by Rose Macauley here.

http://roadtrippers.kinja.com/americas-creepiest-abandoned-amusement-park-to-open-fo-1448819785

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/193txgo4ake1bjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

Ponte City Apartments, Johannesburg
http://img.weburbanist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ponte-apartment-trash.jpg

more pix and some info here
http://weburbanist.com/2013/10/30/dark-tower-decay-inside-africas-tallest-apartment-complex/

"In practice, the lightwell slowly became a kind of black hole filled with three stories of detritus at the bottom and marked by unwashed walls all the way up. It also developed a reputation for defenestrations – accidents, suicides and otherwise."

yeesh

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2013/10/mixed-fates-sarajevos-olympic-ruins/7403/
in love with the bobsled track

Looks like a prime location for Stalker 2

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/11/15/willets_point_queens_iron_triangle_autobody_shops_new_york_city_neighorhood.html

The New York City Neighborhood Where It Looks Like the Apocalypse Just Happened

slate is the worst american shit ever

what the fuck do they expect a place where cars get cut up and refitted to look like

thank god they found a poignant teddybear though, as a counterpart to all the apocalyptic horror

tbf-ish the pictures themselves are mostly beautiful, without the corny close-up on the teddy

looking forward to the post-apocalypse wherein manufacturing and recycling still thrive

they're mostly antithetical to desolation, apocalyptic blah, seemingly lots of small operations refashioining scrap long after the politer end of industry has been offshored, to........otherize them in that way suggests a sort of squeamishness about the consequences of everyday life or conceivably about working life as it exists on the other side of the tracks

the london equivalent of that place has some fairly lairy types involved, as with most cash business or traditionally low caste trades

the burakumin in japan are often involved in scrapyard work for example

there is absolutely othering and squeamishness taking place there, but there is an aesthetic to these self-build businesses which is individual and expressive and i dig that, it reminds me of fairground art - a workspace designed by the workers and not just industrial prefabs into which people are forced to fit

sure, jonthan meades is all over this sort of aleatoric termite art effect, it's the presentation which is shit not the photos themselves

see www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzNSOhGcQts&feature=player_detailpage#t=3043

what the fuck do they expect a place where cars get cut up and refitted to look like

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, November 18, 2013 3:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nilmar, I think I understand your confusion. This may be very similar to what auto shops look like in your native Brasil. But in America, we generally take our cars to places like this:

http://ronaldsteyn.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ntb1.jpg

or this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ca/A_typical_Maaco_center.jpg

Majestic, isn't it?

225 different autobody shops is pretty crazy. And I can definitely understand the fetishisation from a film scout's point of view. To a certain extent I can write off "post-apocalyptic" talk here as just his imagination working for what he would flog it to the studios as (though that doesn't mitigate the 'othering' factor, really). But ultimately, yeah, this: looking forward to the post-apocalypse wherein manufacturing and recycling still thrive.

And late-model Japanese and German cars are still plentiful.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/11/22/cementland_in_st_louis_an_industrial_adventure_land_sits_unfinished.html

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/11/22/cementland_in_st_louis_an_industrial_adventure_land_sits_unfinished/1384799037.jpg.CROP.promo-large2.jpg

tbh I would trust the people working in that nyc neighborhood with my car more than I would whatever animals work at the free-standing suburban car maintenance palaces linked below

Oh yes, I was just giving Nilmar some shit for being kinda a dick about the matter.

did you even understand what was being said there

probably something preachy and screechy, knowing him.

whoosh

maybe some butthurt for seeing your nation's august periodicals like www.slate.com being ridiculed, but the way they presented those photos is perfectly risible

to be fair, they just republished something from the scouting nyc blog, which I normally expect better of re: dialog

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/11/22/article-2511786-1993A32600000578-214_964x667.jpgp

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511786/Creepy-abandoned-classrooms-dust-filled-laboratories-crammed-science-students-decade-ago.html

wow - those are really striking

why is this thread not worksafe?

prolly cuz "porn" is in the title

i don't think this is "desolation" photography, but it's perhaps a close cousin. maybe it's "desperate times" photography. whatever you call it, this series about a homeless boxer's makeshift home (since condemned and destroyed by the city) is heartbreaking and amazing in equal measure.

uh, just noticed this is a "NSFW" thread. FWIW, the link i posted is safe-for-work-viewing.

why is this thread nsfw? bc of the word porn in the title?

lol i see that i had this exact same conversation in the last bump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZoirUpwCQc

i mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZoirUpwCQc

Abandoned cars in Belgium.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/224339/photos-of-a-traffic-jam-stuck-in-the-woods-for-70-years/

Abandoned Italian discotheques.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2014/09/14/antonio_la_grotta_photographs_abandoned_italian_discotheques_in_his_series.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru

wow, those are great

on the east coast i often notice either old cinema buildings that have been repurposed but still have that really distinctive architecture - or old cinema buildings that have been totally abandoned. they have such a recognizable look in either case.

woah i need a coffee table book of these

would love to see what some of these places were like in their heyday

“I like to photograph what you cannot see, the suggestions a place can give you, even if it doesn't declare it in a clear and open way,”

I've stumbled upon a bunch of aerial photographs of my hometown from 1978. Seeing where the midtown interstate comes to an abrupt finish and all of the houses and infrastructure still standing in its way.

It's weird because I'm looking at something that isn't complete, whose better days aren't in the picture. It's reminded me a lot of this kind of genre, only it's happening in reverse ~or forward~ on what I'm seeing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNV5Sq28Mp4
Drone footage of the ghost city of Pripyat, Chernobyl. I love the gaudy Soviet mural and gas masks strewn all over the floor at the end.

sharivaris posts in the chernobyl thread from the other week are worth a look if u didnt see them

Ah thanks I will take a look.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/06/eerie-chalkboard-drawings-frozen-in-time-for-100-years-discovered-in-oklahoma-school/?tid=sm_fb

love that

will somebody explain this to me?

http://i.imgur.com/pCttLHN.jpg

Nineteen plus Ten equals Twenty Nine

back in the way that's how they summoned satan

I thought this was a decent discussion of the politics of Detroit's iconography, mostly focusing on the naturalization of human neglect and divestment in ruin photography: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/ruin-porn-imagery-photography-detroit/

i was at a catacomb-esque, abandoned, leaky, hospital w/out electrical a few weeks ago for work. wish i had thought to take photos. it was very creepy + uncanny

http://i58.tinypic.com/qwzgbb.jpg - i think i may have a couple shots from the basement

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2015/06/11/revisiting_brooklyns_abandoned_admirals_row_before_its_gone.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJtJ2zUfhow

oh wow that's wild

Yeah. I have never really given much of a fuck about the whole gopro-on-a-drone school of filmmaking, but it works really well for this purpose. See also xelab's pripyat video upthread.

Buzludzha Monument on the peak was built by the Bulgarian communist regime to commemorate the events in 1891 when the socialists led by Dimitar Blagoev assembled secretly in the area to form an organised socialist movement

https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8434/7595819400_bfe640bb5f_b.jpg

https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/1281286/m%3D2048/3fd1f6611089913f602bb0f9fcbe9946

wow

Not abandoned, but pretty desolate.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/07/indonesian-chicken-church/

On Centralia, PA and the ongoing insult of Silent Hill misery tourism: https://quarterly.camposanto.com/survival-horror-8e6bff3c0ef2

i went there in 2005 with my dad. it was raining so we didn't go anywhere really. i ripped my jeans trying to get over a tree that had fallen across a road that looked just like the one in the picture in the article with the "stay away" or whatever.

https://www.abandonedamerica.us/photo28187063.html#photo

https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/is4AAOSw5utaU7Hi/s-l225.jpg

Published by the Sierra Club in 1982

Ran across this blog a little while back and the content/photography is better than most: https://abandonedsoutheast.com