Traces of Existence
We live in the midst of ruins without realizing it—easily overlooked as vacant lots in the peripheral of our busy lives, the fragments of our recent history quietly exist alongside us. While these weathered sites may not at first evoke the roofless walls of the Pantheon or great monuments of the past; perhaps the recentness and brevity of their history makes them all the more evocative. Photographed from above, the foundations of these once-bustling industrial sites are revealed like maps; tracing forgotten floor plans, where work was carried out and lives were spent.
Ruins offer us a way to visualize and cope with time, revealing the transience of even the most rugged and sturdy of structures. These structures contain half-told stories and forgotten histories. Where human obsessions and predicaments once acted as blinders to the quiet histories unfolding within; now—in their disrepair—they seem to illuminate with their hushed memories: a site for the imagination to take root. Through wearing cracks in the once-pristine cement, new life is peeking through. It won’t be long before the evidence of these places is swallowed up and grasses grow where machinery once roared.