likes abandoned places, art and artists, books, buildings (preferably old or vernacular), Europe, Greece, history, Italy, Palestine, pirates

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I wish I had HIS life . . .

 

Jaime Silva lives in Lisbon, Portugal, but crosses Europe every August, photographing buildings and cities

 

. . . like St Petersburg

 

Berlin

 

and Dresden

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abandoned

 

 

 

Englishman RomanyWG is one of the real forces in urbex photography, and has lately produced a book called Beauty In Decay, featuring 49 photographers. I wouldn't normally promote a book but must make an exception here because I bought it and have been quite bowled over by the quality. It is a well-bound hard-covered art book and sells at Amazon for only $US25.

Click pix here through to my collection of favourite pix of abandoned buildings and industry, and to their source pages. Those above these words are by RomanyWG himself and those below by German Kiekmal.

 

 

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

RomanyWG also documents street art and murals . . .

 

 

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Buy me!

 


Pic source -- a photoset in Flickr

 

Battersea Power Station is the biggest brick building in Europe and was pumping out power until 1983. It's power now is in our memories if we ever had the Pink Floyd Animals LP, and the familiar site of the landmark on the Thames.

The station is heritage-listed and ideas for redeveloping it have come and gone -- all eventually deemed too expensive. An Irish property group owns the building and a large amount of surrounding land and is now trying to spin the building off and develop the rest as housing.

 


 

No-one has been able to make Battersea earn its keep in a clean-energy era and demolishing it would be unthinkable, so . . . would YOU like to buy it? No real-estate spin here: I will just tell you it consists of two seamlessly adjoining stations each with two chimneys.
Battersea A, built in the 1930s, is the more elegant, with a turbine hall of Italian marble, polished parquet floors and wrought iron staircases (revamp as exclusive hotel???) Battersea B -- to the east -- was built in the 50s with less money around, and its fittings are made of stainless steel. (Restaurant precinct???)
Photo tour of Battersea as it is here . . . and below one of the development plans. There is no roof across the centre; that was removed in the 80s and the ground is exposed to the elements (outdoor cafes? concert space?)
I hope it does find a new life.

 

 

 

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Do people really have fun at fun fairs these days?

 

 

Maybe they're a great night out for rural folks deprived of outings most of the year round but living in an over-stimulated metropolis, I can tell you our famous Luna Park, despite it's utterly spectacular setting right by the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is decidedly bedraggled these days and there are no queues for any of the rides. It is only open a couple of nights a week and that is because of two things -- noise complaints from the yuppies who moved in to expensive high-rises nearby built since its heyday, and the fact that the amusements can't advertise something new each week the way cinemas can, or provide the illusion of freshness the way, say, shops can by cunningly rearranging their wares.

 

The promise of something new is rather crucial to a night out these days, and you've been on all these rides before.
Mum and Dad took you when you were a kid, and that WAS fun (ie, a new experience). You visit again with friends when you're a teenager just for a daft night out; and you do it again on a date . . . but you don't go back again till you've got kids old enough to go on a few rides, do you.
And then you might take your nieces, nephews or grandchildren as a favour to the family.
That's a total of five times over about 80 years -- and Luna Park can't run a business on that.

 

 

But there's one kind of adult who is still a big kid at a fair at any age, and that's the photographer.
Photography nuts alone probably sustain fairs now, with their pictures of magically-lit whirls and wheels always a hit in shows and websites. They become magicians and illusionists themselves playing with light and long exposures, creating haloes, trails and shadows and selling us back that idea of fun.
While you couldn't drag me on to a rollercoaster these days, you can certainly dazzle me with pictures of the fun it's meant to be.
Fairs are an ideal subject for HDR processing too, because there's no such thing as too over the top where fantasies and nostalgia are concerned.

 

A specialist in the magic of the night and things that whirl and swirl is Notley Hawkins of Columbia, Missouri, who has posted nearly 800 photos of fairs on his Flickr site.
I have used his images here so click on any to explore more.

 

 

Curmudgeon's corner
Back to the subject of not having fun at fairs, because eg one is not a photographer or an American, also see David Hughes -- aka Strobelit Goldfish here.
New to Posterous but not to blogging, he has featured as one of his first items a muttering about "worst theme parks" -- and recommended driving on by when feeling tempted to go to even a good one.

 

That's David though. He's a friend. He's also a fun guy in his own way but just not inclined to get over-excited about anything ;=)
(Seriously, I love him and am one of his biggest fans. I also happen to agree -- but I can't resist the bright lights when it comes to colour photography.)

 

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Paris London Paris

 

 

"Vanvos" (Giammario someone; no name supplied) is at this address and is or was in Florence, Italy, which he has photographed extensively. Then there are other well-known cities -- those I've featured were taken in Paris, London and Paris.

 

 

 

 

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Master of photography and exploring

 

The Belgium-based photographer who calls himself Suspiciousminds takes urban exploring seriously, which means he takes risks. His results are exquisite and have been shown in solo exhibitions.

Go here for his own website, complete with atmospheric sound and details about the places he's explored, and to Flickr to see a vast collection of photos taken in forbidden and forlorn buildings. By vast we're talking more than 300 sets of photos. At least some, such as a visit to a disused psychiatric hospital, are accompanied by stories which add a certain tension.


 

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Eike Manfred explores the past

 

. . . in the form of buildings, in a country that is saturated with pain, cruelty -- and questions.

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Forgotten where these buildings lived and died. Indianapolis?

 

 

Jerald Thompson will commit to nothing on his Flickr profile except that he is "a human being".

It's obvious he's obsessed with neglected, forgotten and nondescript buildings though, and likely he lives in Indianapolis.

 

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