Dan Dubowitz loves to travel the world in search of abandoned, decaying buildings, which are usually gasping their last breath before being demolished to make way for something new — or merely rotting away. He finds beauty in many of these spaces, and he documents them lovingly with his medium-format camera.
In this book, he writes in a conversational tone about each site — its history, its former inhabitants, its role in society (then and now), and its future.
He is also a bit of a philosopher.
"The spaces that we abandon reveal much about ourselves and the psyche of contemporary societies," says Dubowitz.
About his practice of photographing abandoned areas, he says,
"These places were all visited between 2000 and 2005, usually alone, with a camera and a notebook. The exposures often ran to 20-30 minutes during which time there was an opportunity to take in the scene and come to know these places."
Wastelands
by Dan Dubowitz
Hardcover:
176 pages
290 x 290 mm
Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-904587-83-5
A fascinating video interview in which Siberian photographer discusses what it was like to return to her hometown after an absence of 18 years.
New Zealander photographs vast underground spaces – mostly caves and mines – that are currently being re-used for various odd purposes.
stages uncomfortable images of his family members as if they were living in the midst of squalor and poverty.
These photographic "interventions" into abandoned houses in rural Ireland force us to rethink our nostalgic, romantic associations with derelict spaces and make us confront them as they are, in the present.
