Decaying
2 members found
4800 creative works found
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Abandoned couch in Northcote.
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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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something I saw written on a wall of a derelict inner city punk squat many years ago and was compelled to photograph. recently rediscovered while digitizing negative files this photo has not been seen for twenty years. this is what it looks like as a laminated print.
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A very ornate tiled and mosaic corridor in an abandoned mental asylum
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Digital collage layering of a number of altered photos from lake Mokoan near Benalla
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Bodie Ghost Town in the Seirra Nevada Mountains in Eastern California. This 1800’s Gold town once had a thriving population of 10,000 people. It was a true wild western town with gun fights, saloons and a huge redlight district.
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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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there is something eerie about staring down through / the remains of rooms where the flooring has collapsed. / it goes beyond the mortal fear of falling and death, / beyond the realization that there but for the grace of god go i. / maybe there is some inate sense that this is not something that is or should be possible. / it is like staring through holes torn in the fabric of different dimensions / and it throws off your balance and perspective, leaving everything askew. / splintered shards of boards jut off at illogical angles, / heavy radiators dangle from pipes like rusted fruit on steel vines, / and doorways swing outward into cavernous voids. / people once walked, talked, worked, and slept / along these planes now almost entirely inaccessable to man. / distant portals open to rooms and wards whose secrets will remain hidden / until they are erased by decay, by fire, by the wrecking ball. / there is always this pervasive sense that these are the areas where the answers lie, / that if one only pushes a little harder, takes a few more risks / this search for who knows what will produce some tangible results / and this consuming drive well somehow be rewarded with / reprieve, release, redemption. / this is the nature of my obsession. when you look at me, / you should see not what lies before you / my physical shell, a fragmented collection of skin and bones and blood. / you should see the conspicuous absence of what i was, what i could be, / of my very spirit, which has divorced itself from my corporeal form. / i once walked and talked, worked and slept along planes / now almost entirely inaccessable to man. / even now as we speak i am drifting somewhere, restless / stuck in limbo, in the space between floors. / -—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-— more available at my (recently updated) site, www.abandonedamerica.org / photo taken at algonquin state hospital / all rights reserved. may not be reproduced without permission.
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The exterior of this old stately home is really quite grand, and i think made by the same architect as the Way to school building due to the presence of many similar features such as the plaque space above the door etc.
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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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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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photo taken at haley boarding house / more of my work is on my website, www.abandonedamerica.org
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Not only is the janitor leaving his equipment laying about, have you seen the state of this place? He should be sacked! Mental asylums need to be kept clean at all times!
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An image of a dead rose blended with a photo of rust in CS3 / ... No 2 in a series. Landscapes Trees Cards EOD Rusty Flowers Architecture Macro CatchAll DM
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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. 765 Views! ... but no sales :/
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Burma Bagan Region Old Bagan from Mi Nyein Gon Paya at dawn
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a very corroded and neglected shopping trolley found hibernating in Blackburn Meadows nature reserve Rotherham, bought (lovingly) back to life with the joys of Microsoft! Shot using 7MP Canon IXUS using Macro setting and enhanced with microsoft
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No 12 in a calendar series of dying roses blended with photos of rusting metalic textures. This one appealed to me for December – a little star-like! Landscapes Trees Cards EOD Rusty Flowers Architecture Macro CatchAll DM
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A Beautiful Churchill Piano hidden away in an abandoned Lunetic Asylum. Hopefully this entertained the souls. Featured in Nostalgic Art & Photography Oct 18th, 2009. Featured in Dilapidated Buildings Oct 20th, 2009. Featured in Abandoned Items Oct 23rd, 2009. Featured in Urban Exploration Oct 24th, 2009. Featured in Music of the Spirit Nov 3rd, 2009.
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