I’ve spent most of my morning consuming images of abandoned places all over the world: overgrown sections of the Great Wall of China and abandoned theme parks (depressing!) and more. The images look like real life versions of apocalyptic movie sets, like something out of “I Am Legend” but not quite as forlorn as “Wall-E”.
It’s as if our civilization just disappeared one day. The only trace of our existence being how we changed the landscape for our benefit.
Some of the structures like an abandoned coal plant in Belgium are also strangely majestic in a cold and industrial way. In its empty cooling tower I see our technological prowess and ability to harness energy to improve our lives. In its abandoned, mothballed state, it looks like the structure in “Prometheus”; a relic of a technological society that mysteriously vanished.
And I think, what would some future explorers see if they happened upon our planet and came across our power plants and factories? Majesty? Ruin? Pollution? D: all of the above?
Photo credits: Danel Barter Photography