On a visit to Budapest earlier this year, a group of us went to a "ruin pub," a pop-up bar in an abandoned building in a possibly sketchy neighborhood. The evening was perfectly safe, if you don't count the wretched herbal liquor, but the crowded bar, with its bombed-out courtyard and exposed wiring, had a definite cool factor. Unscripted and vaguely transgressive, it was a good example of "ruin porn," the chic fascination with buildings in decay.
From crumbling public theaters and bankrupt amusement parks to vacant "feral houses" overtaken by weeds, ruins are the current eye candy for photographers and designers--and the public who buy their coffee table books or post on Pinterest. Some of the crumbling edifices are strangely beautiful, with ghostly layers of past lives visible through the collapsing walls. Others speak to the folly, or hubris, of man's best-laid plans, such as the disused, graffiti-splattered facilities at former Olympic sites from Athens to Sarajevo.
The ruins are a chronicle of society's shifting priorities, as railroad stations and grain terminals fall into disuse. One book published this year showcases verdant ferns and moss overrunning the decomposing tennis courts at Grossinger's, the Catskill Mountains resort that was once the height of vacation luxury but couldn't compete once air travel became affordable.
In the United States, Detroit is the epicenter of ruin porn, much to the frustration of redevelopers and boosters who are trying to bring the bankrupt city back. Photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, who have exhibited their Ruins of Detroit series internationally, see in the fallen beams and peeling paint a kind of American Acropolis, "remnants of the passing of a great empire." People working hard to redeem Detroit find the gawking exploitative, like rubbernecking after a gruesome accident. Ironically, though, the edgy urban ruins also attract tourists and artists, some of whom resettle and gentrify the neighborhoods, bringing in economic development but obscuring the legacy of disinvestment and racism that led to their collapse in the first place.
But wouldn't it be better if the value of these old buildings, with their ornate interiors and warm, human-scale materials, could be recognized while the structures can still be salvaged? The photographers Marchand and Meffre have another series, this one showing abandoned theaters that have been adapted into discount retail stores, gyms, supermarkets, and churches. The uses seem incongruous, even comic. Yet the buildings are still standing.
Editorial on 10/13/2015