Gregoire and friends in abandoned places
Now if Amplify is doing what it promises to do you will see below these few words a do-up of pix of intriguing rooms long since abandoned by all but the dedicated urbex photographer. And below that will be a key with links to each item. And you will see it whether you're in Amplify, Posterous or Tumblr, with a note to Twitter and Facebook as well. Plus, I will see it in Delicious. All sounds marvellous, doesn't it, but Amplify has not delivered on its promises in recent days. Let's see.
Tableau features work of Flickr's JREJ (Gregoire Cachemaille, who lives in Berlin), Mobileohm (Paris) and friends.
Click here to see it large or even at 1225px See key below for individual pix on their Flickr pages
1. Red Room, 2. Theatre, Krampnitz, 3. New Sky Building, 4. Square Room,
5. [ Potters living room ], 6. Welcome to my Nightmare, 7. Der Sessel am Fenster, 8. The Watcher,9. [ abandoned children's home .02 ], 10. executive, 11. nature at work, 12. in my bed, 13. united color of communism, 14. unarmed, 15. royal,
16. Working class luxus suite
Truly gruesome stories
. . . with photos, here - of 11 abandoned hospitals and asylums in the US. One of them - Greystone - was the final home of Woody Guthrie, who developed Huntingdon's disease in later life.
At least one is still inhabited - by squatters.
It wasn’t until Charlie Lord, a young conscientious objector to WWII and a Quaker, was sent as punishment to work as an orderly at Byberry that the outside world was given a glimpse of what life was like there. Lord was appalled at the conditions he saw; most patients were naked and huddled together in barren concrete rooms, defecating on the floor, with no mental stimulation or humane treatment of any sort. Unable to convince reporters of what he saw, Lord snuck a Agfa camera into the hospital and took three roles of 36 exposure film, capturing some unbelievable scenes. One of the first people who saw the images was Eleanor Roosevelt, who vowed to end the horrors at Byberry. Lord’s photos were published in the May 1946 edition of Life magazine and single handedly helped bring about reform to mental health institutions across the country.
Read more at www.nileguide.com
RomanyWG
5. Textures and paint, 6. Sunday Columns, 7. Dusk at the Cristallerie., 8. The Wrong Corridor, 9. He packed...... but he never left, 10. Sheffield Refractory 1, 11. Hellingly Hall., 12. romanywg-1
Gritty history
Each blog entry at AmericanUrbex explores a building that was once important enough to be shown in postcards. All are now boarded up. The locations are shown on Google Maps and some history is explored, with photos of course, and links.
Some thought goes into this project, most of it done by Wisconsin-based Ken Fager.
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.
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RomanyWG also documents street art and murals . . .
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.
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.
SureShut - Germany
Berliner SureShut urbexes Germany with great abandon — teleport there



















