For sometime now, Urban Exploration or UE for short, has been something that has interested me and has taken prominence in my photography. I thought it might be interesting to provide a window on the documenting of abandoned and decaying structures, and the people that seek them out.

For as long as humanity has been building structures, be it of wood, stone, steel or concrete, there has always come a time when that building has outlived its usefulness and it has been demolished or left to rot. These can be anything from a church, school, factory, prison, house, or hospital. Many times everything related to the function that structure provided is left behind. Metal stamping equipment, hospital beds, pews, desks, records, really anything related to the operation of a given building has the potential to still be there. These items and the condition of the surrounding structure lends themselves very easily to being photographed. Peeling paint, rusted metal, debris, and adverse lighting conditions make them something to be documented.

It's really eerie when you walk into an abandoned building or complex and it's just as if time stopped. One that sticks out most in my mind is a abandoned paper mill that I've visited not far from me. All the machinery is intact, chemicals are still on site (EPA cleanup is ongoing now), paperwork is strewn about in offices. Clocks are all stopped at the same time, calenders hanging on the walls all show the month of August, 2001, it's like everyone left work one day and never came back. After doing research I have found out why the place closed, but going there the first time, I had no idea. It's a very strange feeling, like being in a time warp.

Unfortunately, being abandoned, such buildings are targets for vandals, local kids, and metal thieves. Due to this, many of them are in poor condition not only from the elements but from the effects of human hands. Many of them are beautiful examples of architecture from the time of their construction, notably a number of State Hospitals here in the eastern United States, several of which have since been demolished after years of abandonment.

Basically, there's a lot of history contained within these decaying walls, and that's what a lot of people forget about. They simply see an ugly, run down building. Others see a place where children of yesteryear were educated, where people came to work everyday, where a revolutionary process may have been perfected, or where the first of some manner of goods rolled off an assembly line. There are lessons to be learned within these walls, of how things used to be, and how those things changed the way we do things now.

There is beauty within decay.













Special thanks to: ~fidrich, ~Random-tone, ~caseyyyd, *fallnangeltears, ~Hagbard23, ~PinguBox, *rana-x, *darkview, ~mariaksteinsson, ~tenma-mouko, ~alterallensteiner, and *MrMotts for allowing me to feature their works in this piece.