{"id":33221,"date":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=33221"},"modified":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T18:30:00","slug":"pictures-from-abandoned-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/01\/29\/pictures-from-abandoned-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Pictures from abandoned America"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Abandoned
The entry ascent of the Ozarka Splash ride at the abandoned Six Flags New Orleans<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I confess I have a thing about photos of abandoned institutions — prisons, hospitals, amusement parks, shopping malls, etc. — and photographer Matthew Christopher has exactly the kind of thing I like: detailed and haunting shots of all kinds of crumbling churches and schools across the US. He posts them on his website, Abandoned America<\/a>, but also on Instagram <\/a>and Twitter<\/a>. One of my favorite newsletter writers, Luke “Welcome to Hell World” O’Neill recently interviewed Christopher<\/a>. As Luke put it in his intro:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You probably have your own local variations on the theme. Abandoned factories that made god knows what with glass hanging like jagged teeth in the windows after years of tossed stones. Town buildings left in bureaucratic limbo ripe for sneaking into. An old library with empty shelves or a squat little brick shit house of an elementary school whose halls echoed no children\u2019s voices but our own surreptitious whispers. The \u201cold firehouse.\u201d The \u201cold\u201d whatever. Something was always the \u201cold\u201d something. A place where important things happened and now do not. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"
The abandoned Girard Theatre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the roof of the former supermarket is visible in the center before the stage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the interview, Christopher talks a bit about what the ruins in places like Detroit and Chicago, or even smaller towns, say about the American dream:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When people say, like, oh the demographics changed in that area. Well, no. All the wealth was taken out. It\u2019s not the demographics, it\u2019s the wealth. The other thing too is there\u2019s this kind of sense of if you\u2019re poor it\u2019s because you’re bad. You didn\u2019t pull the bootstraps hard enough. That\u2019s the whole central ilusion we work on. You have a bunch of these towns where they\u2019re really struggling financially, but there\u2019s this sense of stigma around it rather than saying, no, this is kind of everywhere because we\u2019ve been sold a false bill of goods. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here are a few more of Christopher’s excellent shots that I picked more or less at random from the galleries on his site, which are categorized by purpose — churches, prisons, hospitals, schools, etc:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Abandoned
A view of the campus of Taunton State Hospital in 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Abandoned
Abandoned prison, location undisclosed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Abandoned
The view from the choir loft of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And if you like this sort of thing, you might also like the work of Romain Veillon, a French photographer who also specializes in taking pictures of abandoned places<\/a>, including concert halls and towns that have been taken over by the desert, and has collected some in a project called “Ask the Dust” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And another Paris-based photographer named Thomas Jorion spent a decade or so taking photos of abandoned villas in Italy<\/a> — he won’t say exactly where, but most are likely in Umbria and Tuscany, a few hours north of Rome<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n
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I confess I have a thing about photos of abandoned institutions — prisons, hospitals, amusement parks, shopping malls, etc. — and photographer Matthew Christopher has exactly the kind of thing I like: detailed and haunting shots of all kinds of crumbling churches and schools across the US. He posts them on his website, Abandoned America, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pictures from abandoned America”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}