My work focuses on abandoned buildings: factories, prisons, power plants, hospitals—anything that once was an institution to society, in which people spent their lives or their lives’ work, people who imbued the place with its own life. The rest of the world has forgotten these spaces, and when I visit them, I stand in awe of the lives that were lived and the years that were spent within their wall. With each handwritten note, each remaining tool, I wonder about the people who left them, what their lives were like, and why these relics were left behind. As vines snake through windows and trees sprout through crevices, I’m reminded of the power of man and the magnitude of industry, but the ever-greater power of nature.
When visiting and photographing these spaces, I’m entering a world that not many experience. I use photography to document the space as it is, so I can see how it has changed over time and have something to remember the experience of visiting when the location is inevitably lost to time, and ironically, progress. When no internal light source is present, sunlight fills these spaces, either fully or in slivers, where only a long exposure with the camera reveals the true spirit of the place. I use color, rather than black and white, to show the juxtaposition of rust with moss, vines with concrete and layers of paint peeling back to reveal one another. I also try to show the entirety of a space, from the craftsmanship of the structure, to the minutest of details.
The emotions present in these buildings, the people who inhabited them, the years of service, the neglect of humans and reclamation by nature, and the concern of lost history all draw me in. My senses are pervaded by fullness and loss. I want to show the beauty of the decay, but I also want to capture the feeling of walking where no one has walked in years, of everything and everyone that was there in the past, and what they meant to each other. I want to convey the feeling of seeing the light of knowledge fall on a piece of the past.