I’ve always been an archaeologist at heart, ever since I was a small child gleaning clues from old dump sites in the backwoods of Northern California. It’s not surprising that when I went to college I chose Anthropology as my course of study. And it’s equally unsurprising that I continue this obsession to this day, …
Date of Visit: March 31, 2012 The company was founded at the turn of the 20th century. They manufactured a wide variety of products – from spices to baby powder, from health tonics to gravy mixes, from ink to salves. Like many companies of its era, they had mail order catalogs and door-to-door salesman. Their …
July 1, 2014 After we finished our tour of Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Village, site of Hitler’s greatest triumph, we drove for about an hour to the town of Orienienburg, site of one of Hitler’s most infamous crimes, the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Ironically, Sachsenhausen was also founded in 1936, and was the first camp to be …
July 1, 2014 After the stress-inducing breakin’-the-law mess of the previous day, it was quite a relief to wake up in our lovely Berlin apartment on the morning of Tuesday, July 1, 2014 safe in the knowledge that we would only be doing legal activities this day. And such fantastic activities too! The plan was to start …
June 30, 2014 My compatriots and I have explored together for several years and we’ve had very good luck – both at finding ways into buildings (our credo is to never break into places, just to look for entrances that already exist) and, most importantly, to not get caught! And especially to not get arrrested. Well, we didn’t …
June 29, 2014 On the morning of June 29, 2014, Susanne and I arose and headed from Hamburg to Berlin to meet up with our encaustic photography friend Katsy. We had plans to spend the day shooting just one location, but we were running a bit late so there was no time to spare as …
Abandonments come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of interest. My favorite locations are filled with personal effects that allow you to glimpse into the lives of the people who lived or worked in that location. My least favorite locations tend to be empty shells. However, there are exceptions to that rule. There are times …
Date of Visit: January 26, 2013 My friends and I got together in Wisconsin for an excursion to several different locations on Saturday, January 26, 2013. On the agenda was an abandoned nursing home, and a few old farmhouses. Most of the day turned out to be kind of a dud… except for one of …
Date of Visit: January 25, 2013 I’ve lived in Chicago since 2004. I probably drove past the Damen Silos on Interstate 55 a hundred times, and each time I would think, “You know, I should go check that place out sometime. ” Well, I finally got around to it on January 25, 2013. The Damen …
Date of Visit: January 25, 2013 When you fall in love with abandoned buildings, your love story very rarely has a happy ending. Sometimes your beloved is abused callously over many years, with taggers and vandals and thieves slowly breaking her down, one element at a time. Sometimes your beloved collapses under the strain of yet another …
Date: January 20, 2013 You may not know this about me, but I have a long history of mental illness. I suffer from severe depression, which has resulted in a history of suicide attempts, self-mutilation, and other self-destructive behavior. I’m medicated now, so I’m mostly okay, but I still have seasonal depression that plunges me …
Date of Visit: January 12, 2013 Abandoned apartment buildings seem like they would be fascinating explorations: all those rooms full of hints into the lives of the people who once lived there! And I’m sure they are if you hit them at the right time. Unfortunately, most of the apartment buildings I’ve been in are …