Before it was abandoned in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Pripyat was a thriving Ukrainian city with a population of nearly 50,000. The relatively sudden exodus of its inhabitants left behind a physical snapshot of the times, preserved by the absence of humans intervention for fear of fallout.

Despite the dangers of returning, urban explorers have been visiting the place for years. Some photographers use cameras mounted on aerial drones to maintain a safer distance. Other in-person visitors less concerned about safety have gone in and looted old buildings. Most, though, go simply to observe, drawn to the deserted city by those mysterious forces that attract people to derelict places — embodied history, transgressive impulses and human curiosity among them.

Such dangerous or hard-to-reach abandoned places can particularly alluring, especially when their stories are compelling. Take Hashima, just one of many Japanese islands but unusually packed with old buildings. A thriving coal-mining city in times past, “Battleship Island” once had the highest population density on planet — until a drop in coal production led to its desertion. In recent years, more and more photos and videos of the place have proliferated thanks to the internet, in turn raising questions about how much to repair, restore or change it in order to make it more accessible for an increasing number of people visiting by boat.

While some architectural artifacts in remote locations like this have been left largely alone by visitors or modified simply to accommodate tourists, others have gone through generations of much more radical change. Off the coast of Great Britain, army and navy sea forts have been turned into everything from private retreats and luxury resorts to pirate radio stations and rogue micro-nations. Here, a combination of factors, including abandonment by the government and somewhat more accessible (yet still aquatic) locations have conspired to make these structures more appealing for different kinds of adaptive reuse.

Preservation, Restoration & Contention

In central locations with more people (and thus opinions) the fate of historical places has often been the subject of controversy. In many cities, preservation of a current state tends to win out. Even such a seemingly neutral position can be contentious, though, particularly when efforts to preserve are partial or seem superficial, as in the case of ‘ghost facades‘ where only thin surfaces are saved.

Rote historicism is a simplistic default that can lead to strange and unexpected results and extreme scenarios, like cities demolishing entire buildings to “preserve” the appearance of historical skylines.

In other cases, restorations are pursued, though choosing a target point of time or period can be fraught — some buildings have been changed substantially over centuries, making it challenging to decide what aspects to restore. Either way, renovations involve modifications, which can quickly divide people who crave a kind of physical authenticity from those who embrace the notion that architecture necessarily changes over time — the situation of Notre Dame after the fire illustrates the point. Supporters of extensions and additions that don’t match the original argue that visible differences will help people in the future understand what is truly old and new, while critics note that most famous old structures have already been damaged, rebuilt and changed for centuries. There is no single solution.

Ruination, Rediscovery & Reclamation

There are people, too, who think that historical ruins should simply be left alone to decay. Along those lines, many building infiltrators and urban explorers in the United States, Europe, Asia and other parts of the world where urbex is popular follow an unwritten code to leave no trace of their presence, allowing subsequent visitors to experience a disused space as they did. There is beauty in glimpsing snapshots of history and watching nature slowly reclaim a structure.

Some abandoned places endure through careful consideration and the avoidance of further damage, but many persist in their current form simply because they are less accessible in the first place — the latter status applies to many underwater towns and archaeological sites as well as underground tunnels, crypts and caverns.

Once rediscovered, though, the fates of such places depend on where they are located and current attitudes toward ruination, preservation and restoration, which continue to change over time, much like the locations in question will do … with or without further human intervention.

Left in the hands of nature by residents fleeing Tehran, these ordinary houses have become backdrops for an extraordinary series of photographs by Gohar Dashti, born during the Islamic Revolution.

Dubbed Home, the series is about the power of nature in the wake of human absence. She was inspired to begin the project after returning to her hometown and discovering a single plant on the deck of a neighboring house.

“It had flourished in their absence,” she recalls, “and its neck now curved against its own weight. It had the power to stay there. Left alone, it would eventually consume and conquer the home.” From there, she began to shoot organic scenes as well as staged setups to illustrate the overwhelming forces of nature, extrapolating reclamation based on a combination of reality and imagination.

More about the artist: “Gohar Dashti received her M.A. in Photography from the Fine Art University of Tehran in 2005. After studying photography in Iran, she has spent the last 14 years making the large scale of her practice concerning in social issues with particular references to history and culture through a convergence of interest in anthropology and sociology.”

“She tries with her own means to express the world around her. Her starting point is always her surrounding, her memory, but with her very personal perception of things. She tries to trace her relationship to society and the world in it’s most sensitive way. Her practice continuously develops from life events and connection between the personal and the universal, the political and the fantasised.”

From gold and dusted to old and busted: this abandoned gold mine in northeastern Australia is returning its vital elements to the ground from which they came.

Anvil Aurous

We may be in the “Land of Oz” but not all yellow brick roads lead to fame and fortune – Elton John excluded. In fact, about the only thing L. Frank Baum’s well-loved classic and this long-deserted gold mine near Brisbane have in common is rust… ain’t that right, Tin Man?

Cart Blanched

While gold mining is as old as the hills, so to speak, mining the prized heavy metal has become more sophisticated as the easy plays are cleaned out. We’ll assume whomever mined this nameless claim applied the available technology (such as the above ore cart straight outta Temple of Doom) so effectively, modern miners haven’t given the site a second glance.

Boss Moss

To say this old gold mine has been out of commission for a while would be an understatement. If the pervasive rust on any exposed metal doesn’t date it, how ’bout the moss growing on the rust? Think about that for a moment: moss growing on rusted metal gears. Now that’s some badass moss!

Just Ducky

This quartet of rusty rock-crushing heads were duck-faced before it was cool. They still sport the much-maligned selfie pose now, when it’s anything BUT cool. At least they’re not quacked up, which is more than we can say about the gold-bearing rocks they once smashed to gold-bearing sand.

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Gilt Trip An Abandoned Australian Gold Mine

The Chee Guan Chiang House at 25 Grange Rd in Singapore occupies land worth millions yet stubborn owners and protective authorities ensure it remains abandoned.

Home On The Grange

The so-called Chee Guan Chiang House at 25 Grange Rd (corner of Grange and Devonshire) in central Singapore dates back to the late 1930s. It was commissioned by the eponymous Chee Guan Chiang, the first son of Malacca-based banking tycoon Chee Swee Cheng.

Rich Man, Singapore Man

After demolishing an earlier home occupying the plot, the younger Chee hired well-known Singapore architect Ho Kwong Yew to build him a distinctive mansion in the then-current Art Deco style. Ho, recognized today as a leader of the “Modern Movement” in Singapore, incorporated earlier architectural flourishes such as a Roaring Twenties-style grand staircase into the home’s otherwise cutting-edge design.

Leonie Toons

The home was completed in 1938 but Chee Guan Chiang didn’t stay there long – following the end of WW2, the building was renamed the Leonie House and catered to mainly foreign boarders and tourists. New management took over the business in 1964, changing the name to the New Leonie Guest House.

The Other WH

If this isn’t confusing enough, in October of 2013 Yvonne Lee-Khoo (a grand-daughter of Chee Guan Chiang) posted an article at the Singapore URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority) online forum. Ms Lee-Khoo explained that the house was originally named “Wellington House”: the word “well” meaning “good” and sounding like “wealthy”. To this day, wrought iron balustrades both inside and outside of the house prominently feature the “WH” motif.

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Grange Grunge Abandoned Art Deco Mansion In Singapore

An abandoned factory somewhere in Connecticut epitomizes the sad fate of traditional manufacturing industries once they reach the end of the production line.

Hallgreen’s

Safety glasses may have been required but you’d need a powerful pair of rose-colored specs to perceive the power of this former factory in its green-walled glory days. The actual closing date is unknown, its name is not important, its use to anyone is negligible – unless you’re the graffiti artist who dropped his or her empty cans without a care. Did they at least wear safety glasses?

‘Dis Barred

It’s enough to drive one to drink… well, not literally. OK, literally… the photo above would appear to show a stool-less bar counter though we want to believe the bottles arrived after the business closed (or after the close of business). Photographer and Flickr member Matthew Hester visited this name-withheld-to-protect-the-innocent factory in late October of 2013 and no matter how thirsty he might have been, it’s safe to say NOTHING would have made him sample the contents of those bottles.

We Worked

This factory has been closed so long and has been trashed so much, it’s pretty much impossible to discern exactly what products it made, assembled and/or packaged. Not that it matters much: the decline of America’s manufacturing sector was broad and deep, decimating countless businesses and manufacturing concerns across a vast spectrum of market sectors.

Hammered & Nailed

People talk about the “Rust Belt”, often with a “better them than us” aura of schadenfreud, but New England’s boom era of hulking textile mills turned to bust long before the Midwest experienced an eerily similar collapse. Fallout from the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 (aka the Great Recession) effectively kicked the second wave of successor industries when they were down, and hopes for yet one more phoenix rising from the ashes now lay as scattered as the debris on the factory floor above.

Red Brick Dream

The nascent era of cloud computing and globally fragmented product and production sourcing offers few options for bricks & mortar manufacturing dinosaurs like this one. Will some visionary “angel” developer swoop in with bags of dough, eager to turn the former factory into loft studios for niche artists? Would local authorities sweeten the pot with tax breaks and zoning bylaw exemptions? Is the amount of carelessly disposed hazardous waste, not seen as dangerous at all back when it was dumped, put a toxic damper on the site’s future prospects?

Time will only tell, but every former civilization leaves ruins for the next to interpret. Ours is – or will be – no different.