Finding Beauty in Decay

Buildings as broken as I am

A couple of years ago, my wife surprised me with a new DSLR camera. I had mentioned in passing that I had always loved the idea of learning photography and somehow using the images I caught in my fiction. That hasn’t happened in the way I expected, but what catches my eye has taught me something about myself.

Since getting the camera, I have found myself drawn to the uglier side of life. Specifically, I am talking about old buildings and signs in a state of abandonment and total disrepair. I initially thought that this was for the same reason that I love horror, which is that it is fun to find beauty in something disturbing. If you are as big a fan of Clive Barker as I am, you will know what I’m talking about.

Instead, I have come to the realization that I look at these places in the same way I look at myself in the mirror. While I certainly don’t think I look totally horrible at 58. I can see the definite signs of age taking hold. Lines are deeper, bags under the eyes look heavier, and an aura of tiredness seems to hang over me like dark clouds in an incoming storm.

Then there is my mind. It is, to put it rather mildly, broken beyond repair. Modern medication keeps those storms from, for the most part, breaking into cause even more damage, but I am still flawed. Creatively, my mind works well, but for everyday life, it hammers me with fears and anxiety about things that are mostly out of my control.

The pictures included in this piece are from a recent trip that my wife and I took to an abandoned psychiatric facility. The building, although ruined, still looked stunning to me, but I also couldn’t help but think that it was a place I may have landed in were it not for medical intervention. The reason why this last picture resonates with me is because I could clearly see myself in that chair, lost and alone as I watched the world go on without me.