Friday, October 12, 2012

Jacob and Urban Decay



Theme: Urban structures
Sub theme: Decay

“I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.” – Henry Miller
In my photo essay, I sought to express the idea of everyday aesthetics in the subtle beauty of decaying buildings. The photos in my presentation attempt to shed light on just how close to new buildings these decaying, older structures are. 

It is easy to forget that the decrepit ruins of abandoned buildings we  see every day were once inhabited – In a way, all occupied buildings are future ruins. The beauty of the decay on these old buildings tells the history of the area and the people who once occupied them and preserves the memories and stories that once were.

The startling thing about all of these dwellings is that they are amazingly close to currently occupied buildings, the abandoned, graffiti’d factories in lower Brooklyn are less than 100 metres from apartment buildings in which people live.

In creating the photo montage, the main thing that I wanted to display is the effect that time has on these buildings. Through creating the montage it became pretty apparent just how many of these uninhabited buildings there are around the place and it strung a chord with me that these buildings were created by people, just as we write stories or create music. The melancholy of it all ties in well with the Bluegrass influenced acoustic song that I’ve embedded into the video – it too tells a transformative story and really resonates the needlessness of it all.

"Chain Smoke Days" by Mr. and Mrs. Smith is licensed under Attribution, Share-alike and Non-commercial Creative Commons licenses

<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" about="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Mr__Mrs_Smith/Porch_Recordins/Mr__Mrs_Smith_-_Porch_Recordins_-_04_ChainSmoke_Days_1564"><span property="dct:title">ChainSmoke Days</span> (<a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName" href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Mr__Mrs_Smith/">Mr. & Mrs. Smith</a>) / <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/">CC BY-NC-SA 3.0</a></div>

 

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