Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America on Amazon™

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Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America

Regular Price: $65.00 |

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Customer Review

Memorable Photographs of Fading Obscurity
Brian Vanden Brink's photographs of a decaying America provoke both melancholy and wonder. This is a thoughtful book that is worth keeping at hand for those times when one feels a need for introspection. Each of us likes to think that we are unique with eternal visions of our lives, but in fact our place in this world is only temporary - doomed to a certain deadly end. But men and women tend to leave monuments behind, and Vanden Brink has captured those relics with his camera -- before the relics, too, turn to dust. Vanden Brink is a professional architectural photographer whose career has focused on contemporary architectural design. As he traveled around the country on assignment for such magazines as Architectural Digest, the New York Times Magazine and Down East Magazine in Maine, however, Vanden Brink's artistic eye fell on old wrecks of homes, churches, stores, factories and bridges that were all but falling down. Fortunately, he took the time to photograph his...
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July 1, 2009 (Phippsburg, ME, USA) | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 5

Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America
sensitive and beautiful photos, color and b&w, of architectural sites - all kinds. Taken while on assignment elsewhere, Brian Vanden Brink shows his expertise in selecting grand old views, places that have stories to tell. Well worth owing; while a coffee table format, yet this will be a book I turn to again and again.Amazon.com: Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America: Brian Vanden Brink: Books
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May 30, 2009 (Dayton, OH) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

A fascinating browse
Brian Vanden Brink is an architectural photographer who has been taking memorable pictures of the interiors and exteriors of American buildings for almost 30 years. In "Ruin: Photographs of a Vanishing America", Brian has captured hauntingly beautiful images of abandoned homes, churches, mills, are storefronts. A few of the images are in black-and-white, but most of them are in color. Of special note are the photographs of such unusual subjects as the 300 foot tall chimney of a lead smelter, and the stygian depths of an Air Force plutonium storage vault. Enhanced with an informed and informative foreword by historic preservation and architecture expert Howard Mansfield, "Ruin" is a fascinating browse and a very highly recommended addition for any personal, professional, academic, or community library American Photography collection.
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July 17, 2009 (Oregon, WI USA) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5

Product Description

Brian Vanden Brink is one of America's most sought-after architectural photographers. He is also drawn to the mystery and unexpected beauty found in abandoned architecture. Here Vanden Brink captures and illuminates in stunning black and white images abandoned structures such as mills, bridges, grain elevators, churches, and storefronts-structures that once were important and useful. With text by historic preservation expert Howard Mansfield, this collection of photos grants permanence to places that may soon vanish forever. Top to learn more

Modern Ruins: Portraits of Place in the Mid-Atlantic Region (A Keystone Book)

Regular Price: $42.95 |

Customer Review

Many Hands
Years ago, while surfing the web, I happened across Mr. O'Boyle's website that includes a section titled "Modern Ruins." I forget now what I was searching for. It might have been a filming location, it might have been some lost memory. It might have been stories about my grandfather's commitment to an asylum. Whatever the reason I've spent hours wandering the hallways and grounds of man's monuments to despair and hope that O'Boyle presents in his masterful photographs. All the while imagining the people that designed, built, maintained, inhabited, and eventually abandoned the edifices portrayed.If you have visited O'Boyle's website you're familiar with many of the sites, however he presents some in this book I haven't seen; the Eastern State Penitentiary among them. Of the sites I know, there are new photographs. All are presented in an excellent binding by the publisher, Pennsylvania State University Press, printed on luxuriously heavy stock. If you are one of those drawn...
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October 16, 2010 (Marietta GA) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 5

Superb Photographic Presentation
Being a longtime fan of Mr. O'Boyle's photography, this newest publication exceeds my expectations. The book takes us on a photographic tour of several abandoned sites of notable history in the northeast; from the monolithic Bethlehem Steel to the stoic lonliness of forgotten state hospitals, Mr. O'Boyle's command of texture & colour results in a collection of imagery that I find myself returning to frequently. An absolute must-read for anyone interested in modern ruins or historical photography.
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January 27, 2011 (Newton, MA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

Relics and ruins...their hidden beauty
PhotographyI have a thing for rustic windows, and things that somehow return to their organic, rustic origin. All the artificial colors and signage seems to disappear, and the primeval elements of metal and stone are revealed. This of course is especially subtle in black and white photos, that make these structures somehow elegant and lovely.Sure, I'd hate to have miles of these abandoned structures out my window or on my commute. But in their photos, O'Boyle takes them out of the 'real world' and into a more unique frame of thought. It's like looking at old headstones and realizing two things: the representation of what once was alive, and the way the passage of time creates something new and yet still alive (rust, decay, encroaching plants).The most impressive are the ones showing exterior windows, some clinging to just a few shards of glass. And interior photos from Bethlehem Steel, monsterous open spaces surrounded by stick trusses and steel...
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January 18, 2011 (Nipomo, CA United States) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

Product Description

Shaun O Boyle has been photographing ruined landscapes and buildings, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic region, for more than twenty-five years. This collection of photographs represents some of his best work. The book is divided into four sections, each representing a type of site now abandoned—prisons and mental health institutions, steel production facilities, coal mining and processing facilities, and a weapons arsenal. These photographs are hauntingly beautiful; they are also instructive, both historically and culturally.

Modern Ruins begins with an introduction by architectural essayist Geoff Manaugh, who offers insight into why people are so drawn to ruins and what they might mean to us in a larger psychological sense. Brief essays by noted historians Curt Miner, Kenneth Warren, Kenneth Wolensky, and Thomas Lewis offer social and historical contexts for the sites documented in the book. These sites include Eastern State Penitentiary, Bethlehem Steel, and the Bannerman Island Arsenal, among others. The book concludes with an interview with the photographer that touches on his fascination with ruins and explores some of the processes and procedures he uses to document them. Modern Ruins is a compelling collection of stunning and melancholy photographs, one that helps us hear these abandoned places speak.

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Ghostly Ruins: America's Forgotten Architecture

Regular Price: $29.95 |

Customer Review

Disappearing fast
A very impressive photo documentary of buildings and places that have been left to uncertainty, the elements, or destroyed. The brief histories given for each place makes for some interesting reading. The photographs are magnificent, I wish I could step into them and see all the photographer saw at the time the places were photographed. It is sad to think some of these places will be left alone to fall apart or destroyed. This book really brings to mind how precious and unique these places are.
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March 9, 2007 (Jax,FL) | Helpful Votes: 22 | Rating: 5

Spectral visions
A fantastic and haunting look at some once grand and beautiful buildings. An excellent commentary with history, that creates a mood thick with the cobwebs of time. The best I have seen that deals with the wealth of archietectural gems we have lost over the years. After reading, one is so much more aware of the crumbling buildings that surround us all over the nation, and maybe will be moved to save future ruins from total destruction.
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January 11, 2007 (Iowa) | Helpful Votes: 21 | Rating: 5

Product Description

We've all seen them but might have been too scared to enter: the house on the hill with its boarded-up windows; the darkened factory on the outskirts of town; the old amusement park with its rickety skeleton of a rollercoaster. These are the ruins of America, filled with the echoes of the voices and footfalls of our grandparents, or their parents, or our own youth. Where once these structures were teeming with lifecommuters, workers, vacationersnow they are disused and dilapidated.

Ghostly Ruins shows the life and death of thirty such structures, from transportation depots, factories, and jails to amusement parks, mansions, hotels, and entire towns. Author Harry Skrdla gives a guided tour of these marvelous structures at their peak of popularity juxtaposed with their current state of haunted decrepitude. Like a seasoned teller of ghost stories, Skrdla's words and images reveal what lies beyond the gates and beneath the floorboards. There are the infamous Eastern State Penitentiary and Bethlehem Steel factory in Pennsylvania, the Packard Motors Plant and Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, and Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion from the 1964/65 World's Fair. There is the entire town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where a trash fire set inside an old mine in 1962 morphed into an underground inferno that incinerated the town from underneath; more than forty years later, the subterranean fire still rages. The town is empty now, just as the many other abandoned places in this chronicle. Ghostly Ruins is a record of the souls of yesteryear and a chronicle of America's haunted past. Top to learn more

Expands your perspective on the world of architecture.
Author Skrdla presents his unique vision of the world of abandoned buildings across the USA. Lavishly illustrated in compelling black and white images, the book opens your eyes to the beauty and sadness of the deserted cast-offs of our "throw-away" age.The book is organized in a series of types of building, from residential to industrial. Skrdla has an ironic and tight writing style which clearly expresses his love for these often dramatic examples of man's ego and confidence. He also makes the reader take stock of the increasingly homogenized, sterile, and industrially functional buildings our society is willing to accept. He makes the stong point that we are losing the pride in civic architecture which is the foundation of lasting meaning and beauty.
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December 31, 2007 (Caldwell, Idaho United States) | Helpful Votes: 17 | Rating: 4

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Forbidden Places: Exploring our Abandoned Heritage

Regular Price: $39.95 |

Customer Review

Remarkable!
Amazing photos of the tracks of human activity.The print quality is very good on my copy. Go to the author's web site for more details on these sites, understanding the worker's (or inmate's or patient's) story at these sites is important.
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August 13, 2011 (Buffalo, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

Forbidden Places: An artistic journey of architectural decay.
Includes many photographs of abandoned industrial, institutional and domestic locales in Europe. I was impressed by the variety of locations. This book is thoughtfully composed and interesting. The slightly cryptic/poetic descriptions left me wanting to know more details about these mysterious places. This is more of a photography book than an in-depth report of urban exploration. A number of these magnificent lost structures have been destroyed already, making some of these pictures all the more rare. Haunting and beautiful.
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July 2, 2011 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

Product Description

Head off to explore the filming location of 12 Monkeys, Michael Jackson’s hometown turned ghost town, Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Village, deconsecrated churches, forgotten castles, deserted train stations, prisons and mental asylums, a cemetery of rusted locomotives, abandoned steel factories, phantom metro stations, and more.

For 10 years, Sylvain Margaine has traveled the world in search of these forbidden and forgotten places. An exceptional photographic report.

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Great photographs but poor print quality
I am a huge fan of Sylvain Margaine, but I am disappointed with the quality of the print of this book. I much rather watch his pictures on his website... So, why buy the book?
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December 18, 2010 (US of A) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 3

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Stealth Hogs

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Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

Regular Price: $46.95 |

Customer Review

A Moody Glimpse of Old Asylums
I'd been looking forward to Christopher Payne's new book, as I've long had a copy of his book on the forgotten subway power substations.His new book "Asylum" is even richer than the previous book, as it captures the mood of many of these abandoned mental hospitals. I especially like the interior shots of hallways, treatment areas and especially the behind the scenes shots of boiler rooms,work shops and storage areas.The exterior shots of many of the hospitals built before 1900 give a glimpse of a whole other approach to the treatment of people in trouble. Many of the buildings look more like resorts and reflect a model of the hospital as a positive place to get away from the pressures of life.Payne was blessed with access to many of these unused buildings and is further blessed with an eye that sees much and captures it on photos.
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September 30, 2009 (Brooklyn, New York United States) | Helpful Votes: 31 | Rating: 5

Fascinating and beautiful
This collection of photographs contains an illuminating forward by Oliver Sachs and beautiful, melancholy views of historically significant architecture that should have been preserved. There's also an interesting section at the end about the tragic destruction of Danvers State Hospital in Boston, the magnificent building that first piqued my interest in this subject. I look forward to seeing more from this photographer.
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October 6, 2009 (Savannah, GA) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 5

Product Description

Powerful photographs of the grand exteriors and crumbling interiors of America's abandoned state mental hospitals.

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A Moving Homage to State Hospitals
I came to "Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals" having interpreted "closed" figuratively (i.e. private; inaccessible to the general public). But Christopher Payne intends the word literally here, in this photographic tour of state psychiatric hospitals that have ceased operation and fallen into ruin.In an introductory essay, neurologist Oliver Sacks discusses asylums as the self-supporting, castle-like sanctuaries they began as in the late 1800s, rather than the wretched places of confinement most grew to be by the mid-1900s. Photographer Christopher Payne laments similarly in his essay: "Sadly, few Americans realize that these institutions were once monuments to civic pride, built with noble intentions by leading architects and physicians who envisioned the asylums as places of refuge, therapy, and healing."Those essays are followed by nearly 200 full-page photographs (black and white, color) showing the decayed remains of numerous...
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December 15, 2009 (Chicago) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 4

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Buy Abandoned Buildings

Or hey, let’s wire up a vacant, useless building with explosives, and then sell raffle tickets at $20 a pop to be the one to push the button that blows it up. I played the video game Rampage a lot over the years…you give me access to a wrecking... - The people around the dangerous, empty buildings get to get them cleaned up and out of their neighborhoods ( and then, hey cities – sell those lots cheap to the neighboring property owner and you both get an even bigger win That is an... Oh and the possibility of asbestos depending on the building/house. And everyone involved has to sign waivers until their hands cramp up. I first started talking about this a little over two years ago…and I still haven’t heard a reasonable answer as to why this can’t be awesome for all involved parties:.

“And then the houses are so close together that – there’s an abandoned house here and then a beautiful house next door and then that ends up going too. The fire has engulfed a building reported to be abandoned at the I-94 service drive and Ogden near Lonyo. DETROIT (WWJ) – A large fire blazed in a residential area in southwest Detroit.

- François Hollande himself, promised today that France’s relation with America will not deteriorate with him as President I am not a Socialist at all, but I have concluded after 2 years of reflection and interviews that France will be better off... But now a big part of France, including me, feels a bit “abandoned” when Barack Obama does not say that he will get along with François Hollande, if Hollande became the President of France. And this one is fair, considering France has a history with its ancient colonies: François Hollande says that every immigrants’s case (The legal ones, of course) case will be examined individually, while Sarkozy changed that into: Hollande said... The reason that I did not like the socialists was because of giving out welfare more easily than Sarkozy’s party, but then again if you look at it, half-assistancy (like it is now) has increased crimes during Sarkozy’s era, while France will... As for me, I liked how “The Wall Street Journal” said it better 2 days ago: “The world is not worried about (François) Hollande, but (it is worried about) Holland”. And I will support François Hollande until he wins, because he is the one who can help the French people to get out of this eternal suffering Sarkozy’s era. But because Barack Obama has been used more than once as a Poster man for Sarkozy, shouldn’t he re-assure François Hollande’s supporters who might be afraid that he does not want anything to do with them. But if I was Sarkozy’s adviser, I would ask him to resign and come back as President at another time, because right now Sarkozy is also ruining his son’s political career.

The fire has engulfed a building reported to be abandoned at the I-94 service drive and Ogden near Lonyo. DETROIT (WWJ) – A large fire blazed in a residential area in southwest Detroit.

Abandoned Buildings News

Fire rips through abandoned East Wareham building

An abandoned East Wareham building was leveled after a fast-moving fire ripped through it just before 9 pm on Monday. "The whole house just fell over," said Wareham resident Mikel Kelle, who had picked up food at the McDonald's on Cranberry Highway at
Robert Simon, 98, is still the face of Reston

Reston could have unfolded on Staten Island, NY, instead of some hills way outside Washington, DC Simon said he bought an abandoned airport and surrounding land in the heart of Staten Island and began drawing up plans for ”Downtown Staten Island” there
2 Philadelphia firefighters die in building collapse

Sweeney, 25, and 37-year department veteran Lt. Robert Neary, 60, who were battling a massive blaze at an abandoned warehouse Monday, were killed when an adjacent furniture store they were inspecting collapsed, burying them in a pile of debris,