I love photographs of old, broken stuff and places. I’m not sure if it’s the photographer in me or just a pining for the past I never knew, but modern photographs of old or broken things are some of my favorite visuals to study. They make for great story fodder and reference material, too.
I find photos of failed construction projects to be similarly fascinating. This, for example, is a composite shot of a failed building project near my home. This is one of two giant apartment/business combo buildings that was started during the housing boom. It was never something our community even needed in the first place, but the housing bubble broke and the construction company simply ran out of money. (They were counting on preselling $1,000,000 condos to finance the construction… in our community where $200,000 will buy a good sized family home and the average salary is $45,000/year or so. Yeah, they didn’t really understand math.) It’s a blight on our main thoroughfare, a testament to bad economics and stupendous lack of foresight. And yet it remains. Unfinished, untended, unnecessary.
Failed Building Construction
I wrote about this before in my Falling Apart article. I highly recommend going and checking that out, as it carries the bulk of the philosophical rumination I might offer in this vein, and better, some really cool photos and links.
In the meantime, I’ve been collecting links to other fascinating collections of photographs in the same vein; busted buildings, urban decay and varied displays of the ravages of time. Some of it may be politically or socially charged, at least in the implications, some of it might simply be due to the inexorable march of time. Some of it, like the Chinese ghost cities, the ruins of Prypiat or the Winchester Mystery House, is ripe for storytelling, whether digging into the actual stories or riffing on reality for fictional fun.
Much of it is somber, sad and even tragic. Sometimes it’s creepy, and the realities can be appalling. Still, it’s fascinating, and it invokes musings on mortality and the meaning of life and why we do what we do. Is it more important to have lived well or to have left something behind? What is the most important mark of our passage in this mortal coil? …is it important at all? What if death were unhinged, what then? What can those who have gone before teach us today? Do we care, or do we keep making the same dumb mistakes, only to see our work on the scrap heap of history?
China’s Abandoned Wonderland
Chinese Ghost Cities
New South China Abandoned Mall
Abandoned Asian Architectural Wonders
Prypiat and Chernobyl
Yugoslavian Monuments
Winchester Mystery House
via Wikipedia
Surreal places in the Real World
Decay Photography Challenges
via Digital Photography School
Weathered
Dark Stores (abandoned stores and malls)
Randall Park Mall (huge, empty mall)
And just for fun…
Decaying Victorian Buildings… in LEGO.
As in, this Mike Doyle fellow built these to look broken down. Crazy stuff.
Pripyat photos always fascinate me. It may be many years before we fully understand what went wrong in Chernobyl (thought we have a pretty good idea, we don’t yet know the full repercussions), and the Soviet Union in general.
Some of the best photos in this set are the Prypiat ones (and some of the creepiest are the ones of their hospitals). I had no idea there was a local amusement park that was set to open five days after the meltdown. As such, it makes for a good case study about something in near-pristine unused condition simply left to the elements.
Crazy stuff. I’d love to go take photos… except apparently, it’s still fairly hot in some places. Not sure that’s worth it. Well, and then there’s that whole “get to Russia, get permission” part.
It’s obviously not as good, and you already shot this down as a game idea, but you really might want to try STALKER for a way to wander around Pripyat. Or inside the Sarcophogus. Warning: Creepy Russian mind-control voice. What is lost in reality and detail is partially made up for with autonomy, of being able to move around.
I knew you’d mention that. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of it, too. It’s tempting, it really is. Dystopic games aren’t exactly uncommon, but ones based in reality like that are especially interesting.
There’s something really fascinating about abandoned shopping malls. I think there’s something to them, where we expect them to be shiny and full of life. A lot of effort is put into making malls a welcoming and friendly place. So, when you see one bereft of life, it’s something we don’t quite know how to define.
There was a condo development near my commute that got stuck in limbo, partially built, for a number of years. The press was calling it “Tyvek Towers” because the siding wasn’t on yet. Someone finally put in enough money to get the siding and windows done, so it won’t decay to nothing and have to be torn down. We’ll see if it ever becomes economical to finish it, though.
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