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"Abandoned buildings United States Pictorial works."
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America rewind
Traveling across the United States, the French photographer Emmanuel Georges went in search of the American dream. Using a large-format camera and a documentary-style approach, he captured the reality of America encountered during his journey. At the same time, his photographs reveal a finely tuned understanding of the poetry unique to these places. The result is a kind of photographic road trip of more than twenty thousand kilometers: from the former capital of the automobile industry, Detroit, to Butte, Montana, once a mining city and now half-deserted; through the Rust Belt from Pennsylvania to Arkansas, formerly flourishing cities tell the story of the disappearance of an economic boom long gone. Georges's recurring motifs--decaying faًcades of industrial buildings, garages, motels, movie theaters--become iconic images of American urban landscapes. Profoundly permeated by an omnipresent sense of melancholy, the empty streets, old cars, and abandoned gas stations are testimony to the end of the American dream.
Book
Asylum : inside the closed world of state mental hospitals
Powerful photographs of the grand exteriors and crumbling interiors of America's abandoned state mental hospitals.For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings-and the patients who lived in them-neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors-chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, \"where one could be both mad and safe.\"
eBook
Dark city
'Dark city' is a natural sequel to Lynn Saville's colour photographs in Night/Shift (Monacelli, 2009). Her work in that book made her, in the words of Arthur C. Danto, \"the Atget of vanishing New York, prowling her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed in shadows.\" This book is a further exploration of the urban landscape at dusk and dawn, with a new focus on the effects of the recent economic turmoil on New York and other American cities. Shuttered stores and empty lots in city centers and fringe areas alike reveal a haunting and disquieting beauty. Occasionally, a person or the artist herself is visible as a ghosted image or shadow. Photographs in 'Dark city' also counter-balance signs of loss with a more optimistic message. They reveal a natural cycle of decay and rebirth in urban ecology, as objects such as ladders and brooms signal that the work of renewal is under way. 'Dark city' is ultimately a dynamic and ongoing dialogue between defined place and empty space that will fascinate general readers and urban specialists alike.
Book
Abandoned in Place
Stenciled on many of the deactivated facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the evocative phrase “abandoned in place” indicates the structures that have been deserted. Some structures, too solid for any known method of demolition, stand empty and unused in the wake of the early period of US space exploration. Now Roland Miller’s color photographs document the NASA, Air Force, and Army facilities across the nation that once played a crucial role in the space race.
Rapidly succumbing to the elements and demolition, most of the blockhouses, launch towers, tunnels, test stands, and control rooms featured in Abandoned in Place are located at secure military or NASA facilities with little or no public access. Some have been repurposed, but over half of the facilities photographed no longer exist. The haunting images collected here impart artistic insight while preserving an important period in history.
eBook