Not fade away
May 11, 2013 9:02 AM Subscribe
abandonedography.com is a seemingly-endless photo collection of abandoned places and things. Explore random sites, check out the favorites, see everything at once in the archive, or submit your own.
Or visit Detroit.
Sure, it's an old joke.
Damn old joke, eh?
posted by Mblue at 9:14 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Sure, it's an old joke.
Damn old joke, eh?
posted by Mblue at 9:14 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
This is like porn for me. I’ve said too much...
posted by bongo_x at 9:30 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by bongo_x at 9:30 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
Lots of inspiration for some great Minecraft projects here...
posted by monospace at 10:40 AM on May 11, 2013
posted by monospace at 10:40 AM on May 11, 2013
The AbandonedPorn subreddit is also good. Nothing sexual, but porn in bongo_x's sense.
posted by springload at 11:32 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by springload at 11:32 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Abandoned houses and places are amazingly saddening to me. Thinking of kids who grew up in those places and are now gone, elderly folk who lived their last days there and now absent from the darkening halls, rooms formerly animate with life now given over to the dust and spiders....
Sometimes when delivering pizzas here in rural Georgia I have to drive through paths in the woods, and sometimes I pass by abandoned, dilapidated, forgotten mobile homes, nature reclaiming the structure slowly and surely, the contents of the houses (which aren't always empty) exposed to the elements and decaying. I'd take pictures, but I really don't want to look at it for long, or think about it too much.
posted by JHarris at 12:18 PM on May 11, 2013
Sometimes when delivering pizzas here in rural Georgia I have to drive through paths in the woods, and sometimes I pass by abandoned, dilapidated, forgotten mobile homes, nature reclaiming the structure slowly and surely, the contents of the houses (which aren't always empty) exposed to the elements and decaying. I'd take pictures, but I really don't want to look at it for long, or think about it too much.
posted by JHarris at 12:18 PM on May 11, 2013
This has caused me to change my computer background several times within the past 5 minutes or so. I love this.
posted by nohaybanda at 1:28 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by nohaybanda at 1:28 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Abandoned houses and places are amazingly saddening to me.
Gosh, if anything is magic it's abandoned places. Surely revisiting old haunts is human, the more personal the better. If it's nowhere you spent past time yourself you can marvel, but if it's a place you did inhabit for any reasonable chunk of life — if you are the kid who grew up and left — then there's no better access to a comparative mix of feelings, thoughts, and imaginings, then and now. The best way to indulge reverie is on-site. Brilliant. Sadness would only be one component. You're missing out, JHarris.
(Now demolition, that's sad.)
posted by de at 4:18 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Gosh, if anything is magic it's abandoned places. Surely revisiting old haunts is human, the more personal the better. If it's nowhere you spent past time yourself you can marvel, but if it's a place you did inhabit for any reasonable chunk of life — if you are the kid who grew up and left — then there's no better access to a comparative mix of feelings, thoughts, and imaginings, then and now. The best way to indulge reverie is on-site. Brilliant. Sadness would only be one component. You're missing out, JHarris.
(Now demolition, that's sad.)
posted by de at 4:18 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Artists Announce They've Found All The Beauty They Can In Urban Decay
posted by neroli at 5:33 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by neroli at 5:33 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
de, I get that. But it's outweighed in my mind by thoughts of bygone times, of people living alone and eventually expiring forgotten, of childhoods rotting in the woods, of a thousand Lucys dwelling among the untrodden ways, of bright moving-in mornings and their eventual bookending leavings. Because if you move out of a place and someone else moves in the story continues, but if no one does, then that's sadness in an exceptionally pure form in my opinion. And eventually all buildings end up that way, every one, with the last, the biggest, and the saddest being, someday, the Earth itself.
Please remember to turn the light off before leaving the planet.
posted by JHarris at 6:54 PM on May 11, 2013
Please remember to turn the light off before leaving the planet.
posted by JHarris at 6:54 PM on May 11, 2013
A friend once took me to a junkyard in Georgia, I think it was. It wasn't an official junkyard, just where people had dumped their old cars to rot. It was so beautiful and sad and amazing, because these were Cadillac with fins and other cool cars from that era, with plants growing in them. A Galaxy 500 with a 20' tree growing right through the steering wheel. Amazing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:23 AM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:23 AM on May 12, 2013 [1 favorite]
I just came across the Abandoned Places archive at Web Urbanist, where they have photos grouped by type of place, such as abandoned barber shops, video stores, or aquariums.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:15 PM on May 12, 2013
posted by Room 641-A at 12:15 PM on May 12, 2013
Whoa, look at this one (from this post). Is this our old suspiciously symmetric friend from the NY Times?
posted by equalpants at 2:17 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by equalpants at 2:17 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
There's another shot of the stairway from a different angle on the photographer's site (this page, 9th photo) linked in the post, so maybe not.
posted by immlass at 7:27 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by immlass at 7:27 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Oh, wow, you're right. I guess that guy is just really goddamn good at lining up his shots.
posted by equalpants at 1:47 PM on May 13, 2013
posted by equalpants at 1:47 PM on May 13, 2013
I'd be too scared to go inside a lot of these places.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:58 PM on May 13, 2013
posted by Room 641-A at 2:58 PM on May 13, 2013
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posted by giantrobothead at 9:09 AM on May 11, 2013