This house was planted like a seed in our childhood memories as the first abandoned house we visited. We would come back many years later to find it still standing, the trees were taller now and so were we. But with no one else there to claim it, it still felt like ours.
We set out on a road trip to explore abandoned houses across the Midwest. We looked out into endless fields in search of houses with peeling paint, surrounded by tall grass that licked at them like a high tide. Driving along gravel roads with the windows down and the wind blowing in our hair. We listened to music, we read to each other, we talked, and we enjoyed the kind of comfortable silence you find between two friends whose lives have been woven tightly together for a long time.
I’ve always felt that abandoned houses are fascinating and beautiful. Time and decay chip away the edges of something that was once called a home for a lifetime or more. And even when all the windows are left open and broken, the whispers of these stories cling to whatever is left inside. My imagination dances with the ghosts.
Abandoned houses are dark, especially after the sun goes down. During the time that I was doing a lot of abandoned house exploration - I did not have a camera that could handle low light situations. So most of the pictures I captured at the time were blurry and unusable. So instead of showing you a picture, I draw on these memories to translate the feeling of being there into a work of art.
Although abandoned, most places I visited were never completely empty. Looking through the items that were left behind was part of what I found appealing about exploring abandoned houses. It’s easy to associate elements of a narrative with a disparate collection of things. In rare cases I felt as though I had stumbled upon a real life I-spy, searching for the treasures amidst the detritus.
Abandoned houses blur the boundaries between the outside and the inside. And as you explore, you have the distinct sensation of being watched. Perhaps this house is not really abandoned after all. Because, now that the humans have gone, there are creatures lurking inside - they’ve built nests in the walls, in the corners. The sun streams in through holes worn by time in the ceilings, and you can catch glimpses of the leaves fluttering outside. The attic feels more like a tree fort, no wonder the birds feel at home.
And even if there were no clues left behind about the former occupants of a dwelling, there was still a lot for me to see. Entropy and decay inflict their own kind of beauty on commonplace things. Time transforming mundane surfaces with new, subtle washes of color and re-ordering structural elements into shapes - a kind of sculpture.