space and culture reader Shaun O’Boyle creates beautiful photo essays that explore abandoned industrial, institutional and related architectural ruins:
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of ruins is the subject that is missing in the photographs; the people who once worked, lived, walked, talked, slept and dreamed in these spaces. Ruins are the remnants of events played out, the end of the line; they stand as tribute and memorial to the past. The aging surfaces bear the etched marks of former times, memories from the past pulse from the walls.
There is a layered meaning in these places, random pieces of a historic and social puzzle are clumped together, confused by years of decay, these ruins are an archaeology of our culture, they reveal unexpected artifacts of a past that seems distant and foreign. Archived in these ruins are the collective memories of a changed culture, the forgotten pieces of the past being preserved as in a time capsule.
These ruins exist in the fringe landscapes of our cities that were once hardwired to the center of the social and industrial infrastructure, now they have become faded shadows hidden behind cyclone fences, along old canals and abandon rail lines.