Detroit City Winter Special

Can`t say I don`t feel the season, I do. But because I don`t want to fill the blog with candles, lights, reindeer and such like so many do in this season, I will do something else, which is presenting you a winter version of decay from .. Detroit, our favorite abandoned living city.
Enjoy!

Abandoned Smallpox Hospital, Roosevelt Island, New York

This institution was opened in 1856 to care for New York City's unfortunate and destitute. The island sits between Queens and Manhattan, and was easily accessible by ferry; it was home to a prison, insane asylum, and other similar facilities. As of 1872, an annual number of 7,000 patients were treated, with an average of 450 deaths. Was abandoned in the 50s.

Creepy Abandoned Amusement Parks

It`s one thing to see abandoned common buildings where people used to live or industrial sites where people used to work, and another thing to see wastelands where families used to go relax and have fun, where kids used to play and enjoy. Now these places look like zombielands! Look at the bright side, tickets are free ..

Prypiat

Urban Photography

Any person sees the world from his own point of view, sometimes this fact is a benefit for human kind. As an example, these gorgeous photos that artists created from their own point of view. And sometimes reality just can`t create beauty so we have to manipulate it, that`s how these photos were transformed into art.

Look through you

Opel Olympia by holger droste

Deserted Factory

Abandoned Horror In Russia

I have no idea what this weird building setup was and what was it`s purpose, but I can tell it has something to do with water or sea world, so it was probably a sea world soviet theme park. Nevertheless, it`s abandoned and creepy, deserving it`s place here.
Sauce: englishrussia.com

Old Abandoned cars

Kadykchan - Another Communist Leftover City

This is another example of the transition from communism to .. whatever rules us today. Cities like this one fascinate me because they are the past future of my home town. My hometown is Giurgiu, I will be making a post with it`s decay soon, and Giurgiu, as well as Kadykchan have something in common, they were both built by communism for industrial purposes, and they both lost that industry after the fall of communism. What is left is kinda scary, what scares me even more is that my hometown could one day look exactly as this one.

Moundsville West Virginia Penitentiary

This building is not really that abandoned, they host numerous events in there every year. But it doesn`t matter, practically it was abandoned in 1995, and to keep it`s charm we`ll imagine that nobody visited it since, except photographers.

Wikipedia: The West Virginia State Penitentiary is a retired, Gothic style prison located in Moundsville, West Virginia. It operated from 1876 to 1995. Currently, the site is maintained as a tourist attraction and training facility.
And now, my specialty, showing you the photos!

Bokor Mountain Abandoned Resort, Cambodia

Today is the first time I hear about this place, and I don`t know how did I not find out about it sooner. I don`t know much about this place, given the previous stated fact, so I`m going to copy what I found on wikipedia.

"Bokor Hill Station (in Khmer Kosthany Phnom Bokor) is an abandoned French town in Preah Monivong National Park. Construction started in 1921 on Dâmrei Mountains, about 20 km as the crow flies (42 km by the road) West from the town of Kampot, southern Cambodia. It was used as the location for the final showdown of the movie City of Ghosts (2002) and the 2004 film R-Point." More here: Wikipedia

So I see that it`s pretty famous, now we find out why.

Haunted

Halloween has passed and I didn`t make a post about it. Neither is this one. I know people have a sort of orgasm when they see creepy places (usually old houses with a story) and they hear some rumors that they are haunted. Now I personally don`t believe in the paranormal field, so I don`t believe in haunted places. But that doesn`t stop me from appreciating the spookiness of those places, the horror stories that they hide, and the natural decay that the abandonment has cursed them with. So here are some Spooky places I found just for you (real and graphic).

Hashima Island, Japan`s Abandoned City

Did you think that only europeans and americans (as presented in previous posts) have nice abandoned areas? If so, you are so wrong. Asia also holds a nice abandoned area, with more than 3 decades of decay. I do not know much about this city, but I know it had 5,259 inhabitants, it was made for coal mining workers in the 1930`s by the Mitsubishi Company, it was once the most crowded city in the world, and then it got abandoned in 1974. Now the only life it has are small animals and some visitors. I personally like this city because it`s not only abandoned, it`s surrounded by water too, which makes it kind of like a fortress. The fact that it is an abandoned city on an abandoned island, makes it even creepier than Prypiat (try disagreeing with that please), the perfect ghost town, but the fact that it`s located all the way in Asia, makes it almost impossible for me to ever visit it.  
For more info about the city visit The story of Hashima island.

Detroit City Downfall

The first post about Detroit City was intended to be made out of a mix of photographs made by many people, instead I got so fascinated by the 2 artists, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, that I filled the whole post with their work. I said there, in the previous post, all that I should say about this matter, except that one day, when I finally get there, I hope these places are still up, awaiting me to immortalize them, as so many others did before me ..

Detroit`s Urban Contrasts

A lot of thing have been said and are being said about Detroit, and I`m not the best person to say more, because I would risk saying things that are not true. 
One thing is true though, Detroit is the city of contrast, capturing the skyscraper business section in whole with the abandoned areas, the old with the new, the gray with the green, creating, at least for some, a beautiful kind of .. poetry. 
What happened to the city you ask? Something with the industrial environment which collapsed for some reason and some mayor who doesn`t know very much about running a big city, so people started to part. It`s still a big city, holding 800k people, and rising, because I understood that some are coming to this controversial city, looking for things that other big cities just can`t provide, from various reasons.  
So from my personal point of view, I see Detroit City as a living Prypiat, as half of the city looks like an american versions of Prypiat, the other looks like the metropolitan area it wants to be.

I`ll give it a start with Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, along with a quote from their website: "Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes ... the volatile result of the change of eras and the fall of empires. This fragility leads us to watch them one very last time: to be dismayed, or to admire, it makes us wonder about the permanence of things."

And because I mentioned them, I will start off with some of their work:

No Humans - Graphic Photography

The same story, imagining the supreme urban decay, where no humans can protect and interfere with the, now, vulnerable system. It`s all in the hands of the wild, as some imagined (visit Videos page)

Abandonment in games #1 - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The game industry has it`s junkies, people that love what we love, and with the ability to implement the creepiest places in creepy games. This is the first post of the series, featuring S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Chernobyl 

0 Humans - Graphic Photography

I just found some old graphic photos stored somewhere on my hardware. I remember getting them from a random blog I found a few months ago, if you recognize them and you know the link to that blog please post it. You cannot deny that this, is indeed, art! 
Just feel it, let it drive your senses, and imagine that one day, one of these landscapes becomes real, and you, as the last human alive [or so you would think], struggle to survive. Nothing from which you learned and applied in the former human society is not valid anymore, the new daylight has something else in stored for you ...

 

Bucharest Decay

We could not forget about our lovely country, Romania. And how could we? We`re surrounded by decay porn material here. The fall of communism and the new government together created a nice strong structure of industrial and urban decay, places that were productive, but then got new owners and most of them are not what they used to be, as you will see in the photos below. 

I`ll give it a start with the capital, Bucharest, and all it`s beauty. 

gallery: picasaweb.google.com/arheologieindustriala

Industrial Decay

The industrial area is that place where you don`t go for relaxing walks with your loved one, nor to take photos to turn into postcards so you can send them to friends and tell them "I wish you were here" (use it as a Halloween joke hehe). That is if you`re not a industrial decay porn junkie like me! Now the industrial ... industry is a funny thing, with it you get air pollution, sound pollution and so forth, but without it you can not run a fully operational city. You just cant, you need factories, shipyards, water heating centers and so on, now these create jobs, jobs create the opportunity for everyone to be employed, which means a high number of people will fill the city. It`s the industry that separates urban from rural. Now what happens when those factories collapse? I`m thinking of Prypiat. Just wait and see.


Behold:

Urban Decay

Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape..
 
Source: viswiki.com

 Fine examples

Prypiat (starter)

As this is the first post, it will be about a place that I enjoy very much, it just talks to me. You probably heard about it and you will probably see a lot of posts about it on this blog in the future. So, here are some pictures I picked up in a hurry, just to get the blog started. I will just let the pictures talk for themselves.