contemporary.ruins

[an on.going project]

The photography of abandoned spaces is not new. The exciting and introspective project of creating an urban archive has been going on for decades. And as the remarkable pace of urban development quickens, this project becomes all the more vital.

But I do it for the silence.

Silence is not an attribute one would usually ascribe to urban life. Unlike the typical clamour which seems all too abundant in the life of a city, silence seems to require an active search on our part. Within the post-industrial built environment, I tend to find the greatest quiet in places which, ironically, once created the greatest noise. Whether factories, asylums, churches, schools, power stations or simple houses, all of the images depicted in this photo series reveal places long-devoid of their inhabitants. Trapped in the silent space between activity and redevelopment (or demolition), they bear witness to a past made present by their remnants, while quietly awaiting their fate.

The longer a place rests unused and unseen, the more mysterious the items inside become; the longer the interval between being lost and found, the more imagination one must employ to create a story surrounding it. Since time distorts what it cannot destroy, the items that remain in an abandoned building seem strange, out of place, and uncanny.

Telling stories about such objects becomes necessary, then, as the human mind refuses to accept total abandonment: we insist on furnishing an imagined genealogy for the orphaned objects that cross our paths.