Chernobyl: An Inventory of Mortality by Josephine Pugh is a poignant reminder of the potential danger of nuclear energy.
Posts marked abandoned
Vegetation overtakes an abandoned building complex in the Jhongjheng District of Badouzi, Taiwan. Photos by Flickr user Cock_a_doodle_do.
Images from the book The Ruins of Detroit City by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre
About the book:
Over the past generation Detroit has suffered economically worse than any other of the major American cities and its rampant urban decay is now glaringly apparent during this current recession. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre documented this disintegration, showcasing structures that were formerly a source of civic pride, and which now stand as monuments to the city’s fall from grace.
“Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is temporary by nature, the volatile result of the end of an era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time: being dismayed, or admiring, wondering about the permanence of things. Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.”
I first got to know Nicholas Carron’s work on Instagram where he posts under the name Urban Curse. His work has since spread way beyond the confines of his mobile origins into galleries, museums and books. That is partly because he is a man on a mission. After witnessing first hand the collapse of his once middle class neighborhood in Columbus, he wants to be a part of its rejuvenation through creating awareness about urban decay and raising money for the children who live on the troubled south side of Columbus. All proceeds from the sale of his terrific new book will benefit Columbus Kids: Ready, Set, Learn, led by United Way of Central Ohio.
Ghost Towns by Troy Paiva
About the work:
Troy Paiva, AKA Lost America, has been creating light painted night photography in abandoned locations and junkyards since 1989. His documentarian, yet surrealist–sometimes playful, sometimes haunting work examines the evolution and eventual abandonment of the communities, infrastructure and social iconography spawned during America’s 20th century expansion into the cities and deserts of the West–and the intensely exhilarating, yet strangely comforting act of sneaking around in the middle of the night, creating art from its ruins.
(h/t CountryGold)
Aftermath by Jörn Vanhöfen
About the project:
Although his subject is perhaps best characterized as human interventions in the landscape and the structures of civilization, Vanhöfen’s images evince a psychological range extending beyond more familiar conceptions of post-New Topographics landscape photography. Not mere documents, these grand tableaus function as visual metaphors: allegories of architecture and the complex dynamic between nature and culture. Searching pictures, they suggest that amidst the decay and abandonment that all is not disconsolate and beyond redemption. Indeed, wit and awe appear in equal measure with outrage and condemnation. In one image from the series, a disconsolate apartment building, initially appearing passed over by the intractable advances of modernity, seems uninhabitable, until one notices the plume of smoke rising from the chimney — the sign of presence and beacon of persistence.
From sublime vertiginous vistas to restrained views on structures of refuse and ruin, Vanhöfen charts the effects of social drives that have globally propelled development and the pursuit of wealth. A peripatetic artist, Vanhöfen travels the world over, arriving at pictures that convey the tumult of the 21st century.
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