Abandoned ruined
652 creative works found
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“A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.” Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988) If you would like to purchase any of my art in a larger format, please contact me. Other works by Earthairfire:
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Abandoned French farm house near the city of Bourbonne les Bains. / / If you want to see more photos from France click on the image below. / / Have a look at my other photos. For example: / / / / / / / / / / / / Or browse through one of my categories flower / poppy / water / leaf / other / reflection / macro / insect
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I would like to thank Richard Shepherd for letting me us his image.( Closed Chapel ) check out his art photography its awesome work. Richard Shepherd Closed Chapel
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another picture from inside Rookerhope Cottage
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“That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it…. We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.” / ~Paracelsus / —-—-—-—-—— / photo taken at tedford power plant / more photos online at www.abandonedamerica.org
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A brief candle; both ends burning / An endless mile; a bus wheel turning / A friend to share the lonesome times / A handshake and a sip of wine / So say it loud and let it ring / We are all a part of everything / The future, present and the past / Fly on proud bird / You’re free at last. - written by Charlie Daniels, en route to the funeral for his friend, Ronnie Van Zant of the band, Lynyrd Skynyrd. / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-- / all rights reserved. photo taken at teton state hospital. / more of my work is available at www.abandonedamerica.org
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easily one of the grandest and most ornate asylums ever built, / algonquin river state hospital was a cause of great local controversy during construction / due to running far over budget. the extravagance is evident in the beautiful masonry, / the ornamental woodwork, the stained glass windows with their decorative yet functional iron grating. / olmsted, the man who designed central park, laid out the grounds and the span of the wings / is half a mile, if you walked end to end. / to do so now is impossible. / in an ironic twist, the much-contested (and extremely expensive) yellow pine floors / fared far less impressively over time than those made of other, cheaper materials. / the epic scale of the structural collapse, combined with a devastating fire last summer, / make algonquin river state hospital quite possibly the most deadly building in existence. / floors like the one shown here / give way into gaping abysses, punji pits full of sharp, splintered boards / fanning out from the basement like jagged teeth in the ever-hungry mouth of death itself. / to take this photo i had to make it from the crumbling doorway on the left / onto the sagging mess in the extreme foreground. the floor shifted beneath my feet / and my added weight sent dust and debris cascading ominously into oblivion below. / it was quite possibly the most frightening moment of my life, second only to the one / where i had to get back into the doorway with no real solid ground to support me as i inched closer. / i may not be terribly afraid of death. i may even frequently wish for it. / i am, however, afraid of being paralyzed, of falling onto a rotted shard of floorboard and / laying impaled and broken for hours, with no real help available. i am not too proud / to admit that i wanted nothing more than to stay in the relative safety of the door frame, / or that i am glad that i will never again have to make the nerve-wracking leap of faith / back to the only exit. / that being said, i would do it again if i had to. there is no better example than algonquin / that all things fall apart, and i feel a certain kinship with it. we are both collapsing inside, / and it is an odd thing to see before your very eyes what you imagine / your own heart looks like. / very odd indeed. / —-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-- photo taken at algonquin river state hospital. all rights reserved. / more of my work is available on abandonedamerica.org
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something was wrong with him. every time he looked in the / mirror he became more certain of it. every passing day / widened a chasm, a certain kind of emptiness within him. it / was something he could see in his eyes, a hollowness where / some fundamental building block of humanity was supposed to / be but was not. he could still talk and smile, and seemed to / function well around people, but he knew it must be because / they hadn’t sensed yet that he had a labyrinth of knowledge in / which he had somehow become lost. in his dreams he was / always wandering in the forlorn husks of things that had once / been magnificent but now only echoed his seething discontent / at his own imperfection. the way that he had entered was / sealed and these places in which he had once sought refuge / from the capriciousness of the world were now his prison. each / corridor he tried to exit by only led to more empty rooms, / more places where people had once been but no longer were. / even when he was externally surrounded by others the world / had become a wasteland; the very dimensions had shifted so / that all welcoming things before him were shadows and smoke. / the vaulted ceilings of his most precious hopes were slowly / crumbling and the machinery that drove his will to continue / had ground to a halt. though it was hard to define the outline of it, there was a / certain kind of emptiness about his features. he wondered why / no one else noticed. / —-—-—-——- / picture taken at portside power plant. all rights reserved. / more of my work is available at abandonedamerica.org
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photo taken in the communicable disease hospital at isle de las gaviotas / perhaps one of the most difficult locations to access that there is :) / more of my work is on my website, www.abandonedamerica.org
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if one cares at all for the truth, it is important / to periodically step back and look at what defines / the world around us, and by extension, ourselves. / in algonquin river state hospital’s case, it is defined by / its grand ambitions and idealistic foundation / and now, by the collapse of these noble ambitions. / it is a place haunted by the scores of tragedies that litter its past, / by its inability to integrate into the world around it, / and its inevitable decline into obsolescence and disrepair - / much like me. / if i were to be honest, i don’t want to see it demolished, / but i don’t want to see it restored either. / it is what it is because of these things, / and its status as some behemoth / enshrouded in its own obscurity and decay makes it / larger than life, legendary even. / to tear it down to make some development or store / seems so pedestrian, insultingly dull, in much the same way as / trying to undo all of the damage wrought upon it, / cleaning it and sterilizing it and packaging it for the masses / ultimately belittles what it truly is. you may look at it / and wince at the sheer scale of the calamity it has become, / but no matter what you think it has finally revealed its true nature, / and has become something far more intricate and ornate / than our ordinary world, / with its gray cubicles and prefabricated sentiments, allows. / to see algonquin river state hospital, you have to actively seek it, / much like you are making a pilgrimage to some hallowed site / that is a shrine to all that fails, all hopes that are smashed by time. / to change it, to ‘save’ it, ultimately destroys it anyway. / and so too, i suppose there is something necessary about / my own longing to leave this world. if i were not consumed by my / relentless desire for my own destruction, why would i seek such things? / sometimes it is the very things that eat us apart, / that ultimately kill us, even, that are our own defining characteristics. / i have no delusions about my own greatness, or lack thereof, but nevertheless / if edgar allen poe wouldn’t have followed a trajectory that left him / dead in some back street’s gutter, if van gogh hadn’t followed a path / of loneliness so severe that it drove him mad - / would we ever know of their works? would they even have accomplished any? / i postulate that dissatisfaction is the mother of creation. / without it we have no incentive to create or to change, as / contentment is suspicious of change, lest it throw off comfortable equilibrium. / and so i suppose my own defining characteristics are a necessary evil. / were i to be happy, were i not to suffer, / this work that i do that defines me, that is paradoxically one of my only joys / would likely cease to be as well. / i don’t want to be a walmart, a business park, a playground. / when i am gone, let it be left to those few who care / to wonder at what drove me to do what i do, and / what frightening and magnificent things i saw in places like this. / i have chosen this path and where it will lead me, all in the hope that / it will entertain, edify, and maybe even enlighten / those of you gracious enough to join me and peer into my life through / the small window of my camera’s lens. / this is my downward spiral in all its splendor, friends. / enjoy. / -—-—-—-—-—-——- / photo taken at algonquin river state hospital. / more of my work is online at www.abandonedamerica.org
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flower sitting above bedframes at an abandoned infirmary.
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Location: Auburn California / Technique: HDR (High Dynamic Range) Featured in Group: / “Posted: NO TRESPASSING” – February 14, 2009 / . / .
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Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men. ~Herodotus more of my work is viewable on www.abandonedamerica.org
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we were all so addicted to spectacle: / the drama of the media and celebrity lives, our / huge cineplexes and large-screen tvs, the / cacophony of arena concerts and the overblown importance / we gave our own silly little struggles. / we were like the romans with their bread and circuses / we were in the colosseum enjoying our pageants and staged conflicts / while all the signs around us were pointing one way: / to our own ruin. / there came a point, however, when we could no longer ignore / the fact that we were addicted to poisoning everything that was vital to us. / food stopped growing in the tainted soil, the air itself became toxic, waters rose and cities fell / you would have thought with our taste for the electrifying harmony of discord / that we would have revelled in it, but it was all so different / when the show finally began. / there was no audience to witness it for we were all playing a part. / we were the ones on the stage, and the / epic tragedies being played out / were now our own lives. / -—-—-—-—-—-—-— / photo taken in juanita de brogas magnet middle school / more of my work is on www.abandonedamerica.org
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WARNING / ©2008 Globalphotos All rights reserved. / All photographs, text and images by Globalphotos are the exclusive property of Globalphotos – protected under Australian and international copyright laws. / These images may not be reproduced, copied or manipulated without written permission. / No use for Public Domain. / Use of any image for another photographic concept or illustration is a violation of copyright.
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photo taken at rosevale institution if you get a chance, my new book is available, please take a look at: / www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/494773 you can read about it there, but it has a lot of high quality prints of my work. and as always, please visit my site abandonedamerica.org if you’d like to see more of my work. thanks and i hope you have a great holiday.
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it’s easy to only focus on the sadness inherent in an old derelict building like teton. / when you know the misery in the history of a asylum, and you see / only the ruins of what it once was, you sometimes become blinded / by the macabre and morose, by thwarted hopes and unchecked corruption. / if this is all you see – in an abandoned building, in your own life, in the world around you / it’s easy to feel that perhaps it would be best to erase it all, to hide everything away / so deep that it can’t encroach upon your fleeting comforts and contentment. / but, in this place where such terrible, tragic things occurred / there is something else that resides there – sometimes in the brilliant green ivy / that works its way into cracks and crevasses the way lovers’ fingers entwine, / sometimes in the softness of the wind, or the stillness of untouched afternoon sunlight – or / the way gravity welcomes the falling rafters back to the earth and time / absolves its past in the oblivion of unmolested sleep. teton had such beauty – in / the sincerely charitable ambitions that built it, in the graceful forms of its architect’s true design, / in the naive hope of the many who genuinely believed it could bring a cure for the ill, / and in those confined who stole friendships and dignity from the greedy hands of / disgrace and neglect. if you can’t see these things, you’ll never understand why i do what i do. / photographs capture slivers of time. they preserve a point of view, a moment / that would otherwise be forever lost. if you seek truth through them, / maybe you can illuminate the soul of a thing, and maybe show someone else / the proud glory and splendor of the forgotten and forsaken. / the triumphs and frailties of human endeavor may now be heard only in echoes, / but i guarantee you if you are quiet and you listen / you will hear not screams of agony and anguish, but the sweet serenity of final release. / if you approach the past with humility and reverence in your heart you’ll realize that / immortality is not something anyone can ever capture – but if you are very lucky, / through a photograph perhaps you may capture a glimpse, / a fleeting moment of something that, in its own abstract and inexplicable way, / proves beyond a doubt that nothing ever dies. / —-—-—-—-—-—-- photo taken at teton state hospital / more of my work is on www.abandonedamerica.org / please check out my new book, filled with photos and text – the link is on my site’s main page!
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The grand staircase, this time shot with only available light/mirk for a more unsettling ‘Silent Hill’ look. Just a little light tone mapping to avoid burn-out and retain shadow detail, otherwise this is all natural – including the small scrap of very blue wallpaper in the bottom left.
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... a corridor in an abandoned hospital. I always loved this image, and the place it was taken at. Sadly no more.
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Old hospital building on an active campus, one of the most beautifully haunting scenes I have been lucky to stumble upon Pentax K100D Super 18-55 Kit lens… F/8 and I believe 15 seconds. Nope don’t need expensive equiptment to capture a good shot. Sold a Greeting card as of 8/13/09 Thank you to whoever bought it :) Featured in LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS and Prisons, Gaols, Jails, Asylums, Iron Bars & Court Houses
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This State Hospital was established in its present location in 1901 as a farm colony for “chronic insane patients”. By 1945 the number of patients had risen to 1,730, with a total staff of 250 with 241 vacancies. By this time the institution had grown to 1,200 acres with buildings scattered widely over an area covering three towns. After 72 years of operation the Hospital was closed in 1973 as the first of a series of institutions to close in its state. The campus is now occupied by a University , a Job Corps Program, and various state agencies. Most structures have been renovated and altered for re-use, some have been demolished. A graveyard remains on a nearby hilltop with 1,041 numbered, nameless graves of persons who died in this institution. A handwritten list of their names survives in various archives.
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Asylum in Virginia Taken with Pentax K100D Super. HDR done with photomatix pro 2.4. 3 differently exposed images, bumped up saturation, luminosity pushed up.
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taken at gallilee steel’s NY offices.
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Suisinish is an abandoned village reached after a rough hour- long walk from Kilbride, near Torrin, Isle of Skye. / This old cottage is too modern to have been one of the dwellings where the folk were evicted to make way for the sheep, which were more profitable to the greedy landowners of the time. Many of the families were separated, and forced to emigrate to America, Canada, and Australia. / I cannot begin to feel their anguish. / There are many ruins scattered around the Brae (hillside), evidence of a thriving, close-knit community torn apart by human greed. Maybe this bulding was built early in the twentieth century, I have no idea and can find no information. / Back to the present….. / There was quite a wait for some usable light, a chilly fierce wind was blowing, rain was brewing, nothing new ! We sat in the shelter of one of those deserted ruins, eating a cheese piece, ( sandwich ) and a cheering cup of hot coffee from the thermos, reflecting on how ‘they’ lived then, compared to us nowadays, and watching the sheep that are now the only inhabitants of this beautiful place. / Rowan trees were planted in the belief they kept evil spirits away, and it is considered very bad luck to cut one down, even today ! This cottage is surrounded by them, I guess the magic didn’t work. A three shot HDR. CanonEOS 40D mounted on tripod, iso 100, auto wb, f22, RAW files converted in Photomatix, and touched up in Adobe CS3. / A little Orton also applied to ‘pop’ the texture of the stone. / A slight vignette added. SEE MORE OF MY ISLE OF SKYE SET….
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