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Why are you drawn to decay?

mmcclellan said:
Artists in the late 18th and early 19th century -- especially the "Romanticists" -- were very drawn to ruins of all kinds. Ruins have held a special fascination for people and especially for artists for a very long time. ...
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Wandering through the museums and galleries of Genova last week, I saw several paintings of ruins and decay. Those were not 18th century, but early 17th and 16th!

The thought struck me that this might have something to do with the "decrepit barn school of photography". After all, large parts of the world are not exactly full of decrepit castles and cathedrals...
 
I was going to say texture but it was already mentioned. Ole is right, in the museums of Paris I saw a lot of paintings with ruins in them. It must be an age old theme. I think with photography the texture and the light and shadow are the draw.
 
Clueless said:
Have you come to deny the subject, passing it off like a fleeting thought; or, do you mean to say that "decay" as a persistent subject of photographers is mere happen-stance of their equipment and location?...
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Oh, nothing as complicated as all that. Just that our minds, once we start our second half of our lives (if not sooner!), identify with the process of decay...they sense the decay within themselves. Some minds, in self-defence, might deny the simularity and photograph young nude women instead. Other minds sense a kinship to the many signs of decay and naturally fall to photographing those signs.

Other minds think I am full of shit. Who am I to say they are wrong?

Vaughn
 
Looking for beauty in the weathered buildings or human faces, or old trees & driftwood is an antidote to living in a society/culture that worships youth, that sees beauty in only the new. Its a recognition that character develops with age. Its like looking at a garden - during summer we are overwhelmed with all the color of the flowers but during the winter we can see the pattern of a garden, its design, its character.
 

Of interest is the Old English poem "The Ruin" which ponders on exactly these things (roman ruins in Britain). You might be able to read it easily since the Norse ruled England at that time:
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/a3.33.html
 
In addition to texture and character - - - there is a fairly finite array of subject categories for LF photography. Landscape, architecture, texture studies, and portraiture are the main groupings although I suspect we could add other labels to the list. While I like landscape work, and I greatly admire the work in this genre done by others, its not something that I feel I am particularly successful with. Part of that has to do with the fact that I live in the East where the nature of the landscape tends to favor macro and color work rather than monochrome. Another reason is that I prefer subjects that are simple and orderly - characteristics that are much harder to achieve with the landscape of the East. For me, roots and rocks tend to be more like exercises in photographic technique and less like expressions of emotional reaction.

One the other hand, decrepitomania provides subject opportunities that offer the order and simplicity that I seek.
 
reellis67 said:
I'd like to hear what everyone else says too actually. For me, I think it has something to do with the character of these things.
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Exactly! Newer constructions tend to be more sterile, at least in my opinion.

When I first started photography, I was in full Ansel Adams mode - grand landscape, big scenics, blah blah blah - and I had very little success. Over time, I've started to migrate away from the landscape, and have started focusing (!) more on intimate scenes, some of which are of old, dilapidated buildings. I still try to photograph the landscape, with some success, but I find the subject matter of my strongest images contains more and more 'old stuff'. Go figure.

Why have I done this? Perhaps it's the maudlin side of me - waxing philosophical about how good it was in the good 'ole days, in the simpler times. I don't know.

What I do know is that I love doing it, and I'll continue doing it as long as I can. That said, I'm off to Escalante for a week at the end of the month - yup, more landscape Something about try, try again...
 
Just trying to find something older than I am to take a picture of :rolleyes:



I think abandoned places tell a picture story about the people who lived and worked in a different time than ours. This structure was part of a large farm near me where 2 italian brothers raised food to supply the WWII war effort at the Army Air base in Tonopah. Interesting to note I've photographed the old trucks extensively for a period of 14 years here. No more. Someone came and tore the bodies off of the frames and took them away. I'm glad I did the pictures I did while they remained. In that 14 years about 1/2 the structures on this property have fallen down.
 
Your question reminds me of a story about Van Gogh. People laughed at him when he was drawing pictures of a horse's ass instead its head in the street.
 
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I don't photograph metaphors, seek immortality, try to get in touch with my own mortality, or try to find the beauty of age. But I do take large format, rather close up photographs of aged, sometimes dead, sometimes decrepit things. I find that the passage of time gives things individuality and visual interest - the patterns and textures others have mentioned. In other words, wabi sabi.
juan
 
Certainly the texture and character of builidings in decay are primary reasons for me.

Up in Copake there are many old barns, outbuilding etc. in various stages of disrepair and decay. And, what was nearly a four-century agricultural economy there is now rapidly giving way to secondary homeownership (i.e. "weekenders" like myself) and exurban sprawl. So many of these structures represent a "world" that is disappearing forever.

And, as Jim Galli notes, you can revisit these structures from time to time and see the further decay that records the passage of time and the ravages of weathering etc.

Of course, sometimes someone throws you for a loop. Last year I took a bunch of photos of a decaying barn near our place. It was late spring and I used Velvia. I have shots of flowering plants growing through the weathered wallboards etc.

Just a couple of weeks ago I noticed that someone is now restoring this barn that I figured for dead! Construction braces are propping it up and one whole side has now been covered with new plywood.

I guess it's nice to see a struture get saved and rebuilt - but I feel kind of sad about it too....
 
Hugo Zhang said:
Your question reminds me of a story about Van Gogh. People laughed at him when he was drawing pictures of horse's ass instead its head in the street.
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Van Gogh was ahead of his time. Today's magazines and newspapers are full of photographs of politicians, celebrities, and other horse's asses.

I don't consider the subjects of many of my photographs as being old: they are my contemporaries. We have aged together. Here in the rural midwest the buildings and implements of decades ago are disappearing. Photographs do provide a record for the future.
 
In my current self-driven project...photographing old Bridges, I find that it makes me feel good to document structures that I know will be soon gone, probably in my lifetime. Most of these bridges were new when the horse and buggy was the most common type of transportation. It is a testament to their engineering that they can still serve a usefull purpose in this modern age. Then there are the derelict ones, sitting lonely at some distance from the "new" bridge now serving the highway. Amazing how nature takes over and almost makes them invisible. The new bridges are almost without exception concrete slabs with no character. Not worth my time to photograph. Perhaps a new generation will find in them, a character that I cannot see.
 
I personally like to photograph decaying structures because of the texture and tonality presented, but I also gained new respect for documentary photography while I worked for the Oregon Historical Society. While I try to create "art" when photographing old stuctures, there also is some value to future generations in any "record shots" of old buldings.

The OHS files are full of pictures of magnificent structures lost to "urban renewal", fire, or just plain decay. The Pacific Northwest rains take quite a toll on stationary objects.

Peter Gomena
 
Add one more for texture! Especially getting in close and being able to capture the detail of peeling paint, rusting metal and wood grain. I look for these things to create abstract images, not to convey romanticism or a story. I started out with the abstract theme with 35mm, worked my way up through MF and now to LF. I'd have gone to a ULF format by now if I had the money.
 
Everything is drawn to decay. Entropy happens. Physics...it's not just a good idea, it's the law.
 
because I usually smell just as bad or a tiny bit better than the decay Im photographing. Helps me feel better about myself.
 
For me it's more of a metaphor that states more dramatically that "nothing lasts forever". Fleetingness of time..etc.

There's also the humanistic aspect being that these were places that were inhabited; people lived there, maybe died there, maybe born there. There's a certain intrigue inherent to urban decay.
 
juan said:
Dear Roger,
That's quite decayed.
juan
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Dear Juan,

I also like the 'Ozymandias' aspect of decay: 'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.' What makes me laugh is that many 'archivally processed record shots' won't last anything like as long as the decaying subjects they portray -- which may already have been around for centuries or millennia, and should be good for a while yet.

Unlike (I suspect) communism. I'd be surprised if it makes its 200th birthday (dating from Marx's manifesto). Even so, communist iconography (like Nazi iconography) can be visually magnificent, as long as you can divorce it from its ideology.

Cheers,

R.
 
Maybe it's just our inner "eternal pessimist" that draws us to decay. A node acknowledging that everything is eventually destined to fail or die, combined with a slightly morbid fascination to catch an glimpse of the workings of Mr. Grim Reaper. Last Sunday's Pearls before Swine comic provided a pretty good definition: http://news.yahoo.com/comics/070415/cx_pearls_umedia/20071504

Roger Hicks said:
Unlike (I suspect) communism. I'd be surprised if it makes its 200th birthday (dating from Marx's manifesto). Even so, communist iconography (like Nazi iconography) can be visually magnificent, as long as you can divorce it from its ideology.
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Respectfully have to disagree somewhat with the nature of your statement (without going into a lenghty discussion). I find it a bit off the mark to throw communism into the same pot as the Nazis, sorry. I grew up in one of the communist labeled countries, and while I can't say that it was all roses and champagne, it wasn't all bad either and certainly had nothing in common with nazi ideology (actually, I lived a pretty good life in the former GDR without the need having to be a communist). Any ideology can be warped, abused and misused by people in power if they are bent on doing so (Mao, Stalin, and a few more recent ones which I won't name) to fit their own agendas (power, greed, madness), but please don't generalize with a broad brush across the spectrum.

Chris
 
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