Already Gone: Ruin Photography and The Human Condition

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre—Melted clock, Cass Technical High School

For the majority of this class, we have discussed photographs of people. Portraits, family albums, baby books. Photographs of people that have been artistically scratched, photographs of people dressed in costumes—photographs of people pretending to be fountains. Photographs of people at war. Although important and interesting, I continued to feel as though we were only examining one area of photography. Something was missing. Recently, while adding a photograph to my collection of wallpapers for my computer’s desktop, I realized what it was. 

We touched on landscapes and how some modern artists such as Richard Long had the landscape itself pose when we read Wall. However, it wasn’t just landscapes. I had always been particularly fascinated by pictures of run-down buildings, remnants of our own civilization. Ruins. I recently found out from Ms. Carpenter that there is a name for this subject of photography: ‘ruin porn.’ That is of course a derogatory term for it, the preferred one is ‘ruin photography’ or ‘urbex,’ and the people who take these photographs prefer to be called ‘urban explorers.’ Ruin photography and the “sense of the ‘lost’ grandeur” a ruined building holds humbles viewers, sobering them to humanity’s own fragility (198, Miller).

Andre Govia—Broken Fairy Tale

Why is it called ruin porn in the first place? Critics of this type of photography claim it to be exhibitionist and of little true cultural value, similar to ‘food porn’ (the now common over documentation of delicious food that George is addressing in his project). To some extent, this is true. After the initial group of these photographers captured the desolation in parts of Detroit—which called attention to a major problem in that city which had been for the most part overlooked—the continuing stream of visiting photographers merely solidifies this representation of the Motor City as all that remains of Detroit, leaving the public who has only seen these images with the idea that Detroit is a lost cause (Miller). Many of the early urban explorers also fear that the new found popularity of their work will lead to amateurs going in and disturbing the delicate peace they are trying to observe, and eventually to the government creating stricter laws on public access and strengthening enforcement of the trespassing laws already in place in some locations. However, as Richard B. Woodward points out in his article for Art News: “to condemn images of blasted lives and places that carry a whiff of ‘exploitation or detachment’ would be to do away with a sizeable chunk of pictorial and written history.” From The Iliad to Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, some of our artist’s best work could be considered to exploit some sensibility or another (Woodward). Although the label is understandable, the majority of people would likely, upon further consideration, find it to be a bit oversimplified and undeserving.

Robert Clark —Angkor Ruins

Of course, many people love to tour the ruins of ancient civilizations. Touring castles in Great Britain is a popular vacationing activity, as is traveling to Machu Picchu. Seeing what is left of these historic places can be breathtaking and fascinating, romantic even. ‘Think what it must have been like to live back then!’ ‘Can you imagine living all the way up here with no central heating? Amazing!’ The feats of engineering they performed were incredible for the time, but in retrospect may even seem comically simple. They lived in a different time, with different sensibilities. We can hardly imagine what it must have been like to live in those times, believing the Earth was the center of the universe. We take these photographs, freezing in time things that once were so grand, and in some ways still are. It is honorable, is it not? To make sure we remember the past? Our western culture would say so. 

In Eastern countries (particularly China) however, capturing in photographs or writing about ruins was rare at best for most of recorded history (13, Hung). With most structures being made of wood, preservation was far more difficult and so the ancient structures were often constantly being redone and renovated back to their former glory, except with modern elements attached (13, Hung). Paintings of important buildings always showed them at the height of their power, even when created in tandem with the few poems about ruins that do exist (13, Hung). In fact, “although abandoned cities or fallen palaces were lamented in words, their images, if actually painted, would imply inauspiciousness and danger” (94, Hung).While Western culture dictated that visiting and remembering the past was important, Eastern cultures promoted living within it. To put it a different way, in Western culture, ruins are very much externalized while in Eastern culture they are internalized. It was not until the 18th century (after firm trade had been made between Great Britain and China) that the Chinese started depicting buildings overgrown with plants and walls with cracks and chips (95, Hung).

Cody Johnson—Burden Ironworks in Troy

But what draws us to these newer images of decay? According to traditional sensibilities, there is nothing beautiful here. Colors are faded, the subject is inevitably asymmetrical, there are no people (usually), nor are these places most of us would want to go on vacation. They are in fact anti-beauty. There is something saddening and humbling about them, much more so in these contemporary ruins than in the remnants of old castles. As Patrick Potter says in the excellent book Beauty in Decay: “They are not dead fragments of a previous way of life; they are glimpses of our current way of life as if it were already gone” (19). The speed with which a once noble church is reclaimed by nature is nothing short of astonishing. Rain soddens a roof until it collapses inwards, streams of light desaturate the peeling painted walls to natural earth tones, rodents burrow new homes in the walls, and vines entangle and choke the pipes. 

Zhang Dali—Demolition - Forbidden City

In modern times Chinese artists have gone a step further in the representation of ruins, creating installations within the wreckage of demolished buildings and performing pieces within them, then taking photographs of their work before the government removes it (142-233, Hung). This once again trends toward the Chinese internalization of the past and their cities. In Zhang Dali’s series of works, he draws a simple abstract face on houses slated for demolition or that have already been destroyed using spray paint. Afterwards, he photographs his work, angling each so as to point out the juxtaposition between the wreckage of these homes and the construction of new towers, as well as the preservation of more ancient buildings in the Forbidden City (228-234, Hung).

Although these works use ruined buildings in their art, they are not ‘ruin porn.’ This is because they do not depict the same ethics as true ruin photography. Ruin photography aims to let the building speak for itself—the photographer is only there to record what it has to say. The mantra “Take only pictures, leave only footprints” (30, Potter) is what keeps urban exploration both so powerful and legally overlooked. The urban explorer attempts to be a passive observer. To be anything else, to inject oneself into the photograph changes the story and makes the photograph speak to a different ethic. The scene becomes a set. The building may tell the story of an entire society but by turning it into a stage, it tells only the story of the photographer. Although the artists vision may be beautiful and may be thought-provoking, it is not true ruin photography. Ruin photography is about a legacy. It is about humanity in the recent past. It is about imagining what some distant civilization would think of us. But it is not about people. Individuals are not important, societies are. Ruin photography is a reflection of society, in as pure a way as possible. We may not leave much, but we want what we do leave behind to be important, don’t we?

Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre —East Methodist Church

And yet the goal of urban explorers to let the buildings speak for themselves will always be tainted by the explorers’ own perceptions. In the example above of the East Methodist Church, a political motivation is readily apparent. The photograph—rather than being taken from the ground floor looking up towards the ceiling (and divinity) and forward toward the altar as is common in most church photographs—is instead taken from the second floor looking down towards the front entrance. The altar is not visible. Only the empty and broken pews can be seen. The line “And you shall say God did it” is still clearly visible, although the word “you” is chipping away. The people have left the church—turned away from God. It would seem that in our increasingly secular society, there is less and less room for religion in our lives. This is a depiction of the failure of faith, and a collapse of our spiritual community. One might imagine a different image of this same church, looking up towards the front altar and stained glass windows showing that even in this deeply troubled place, God is still there. The photographers, no matter what they do, are in the photograph. They choose what to focus on, similar to how many photographers have chosen to depict the ruins of Detroit rather than the life still there. Rather than the subjects posing, the photographers are focusing. They may not have realized it, but some aspect of these buildings became their ‘Punctum,’ as Barthes would say: something in these buildings pricked their emotional being, and they are putting it on display in their photographs. For most urban explorers the Punctums of buildings are quite similar: age—and death—where it doesn’t belong or a vision of a future that mocks our contemporary fears. The Urbex movement is a culture with a homogenous ethical code—a code that stems from a disdain for pointless laws urban explorers must have to do capture the images they do, one that wishes to knock humanity off of its high horse, and look at what its mount is leaving behind it.

As Andre Bazin recognized, since humanity evolved a concept of death humanity has always strived to overcome it. The ancient Egyptians embalmed their dead to preserve the physical remains. But even then they also built monuments to tell future generations that they were here. They existed. They were important. And yet so little of their works remain intact. We continue this trend to this day, striving to be remembered by building ever taller skyscrapers; becoming famous artists, politicians, mathematicians; constantly recording our lives and posting them online for all the world to see—or maybe just saving a family album for our children to know who we were. We cry out to be heard, and though an echo may answer us we fear it eventually fades into nothingness until the void leaves no recognition that we said anything. This seems like a compelling reason why ruin photography is both so sad and so controversial.Ruin photography reminds us that we are already fading, like dreams upon waking. And yet, many of us grasp onto that, leaving it as a challenge. How can we keep ourselves from being forgotten? Let me leave you with a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear --

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Works Cited

Hung, Wu. A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture. 

London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 2012. Print.

Johnson, Cody. "In Defense of Ruin Porn." Land That I Live. N.p., 21 Nov. 2012. Web. 7 May 

2013. <http://landthatilive.com/in-defense-of-ruin-porn/>.

Miller, Hillary. "Walking the Elastic City: Total Detroit, An interview with Todd Shalom and 

Niegel Smith." Radical History Review 2012.114. Web. 2 May 2013. 

<http://rhr.dukejournals.org/content/2012/114/191.full.pdf+html>.”

Potter, Patrick, and RomanyWG. Beauty in Decay: Urbex. Berkeley: Gingko Press, Inc., 2011. 

Print.

Woodward, Richard B. "Disaster Photography: When is Documentary Exploitation?" Art News 6 

Feb. 2013. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://www.artnews.com/2013/02/06/the-debate-over- 

ruin-porn/>.