Ruins exert a preternatural fascination on all who encounter them. Of course, they remind us of our own mortality and of the simple fact that nothing – no matter how seemingly solid – will persist in time. The jungle always returns.

But ruins remind us not only of death but also of our childhoods. Most children question why it is absolutely necessary that his or her living space must be quite so organized and tidy. From a child’s perspective, fastidious order seems to be so unnatural. An encounter with ruins seems to answer the child’s question: “What happens if my room were never cleaned up?”

As we grow up most of us come to accept the need to impose order on our living spaces and on our lives. Thus, the heightened wonder that we all experience with ruins is a flashback to the child’s view of the world. We are all fascinated by chaos and its effects.

Fear of death and a child-like sense of wonder make for a powerful driver of emotional responses to ruins. Add to these elemental emotions the sense of danger and risk that often accompanies the exploration of ruins. There is, of course, the potential physical danger of entering a structure of doubtful physical integrity. There is also the sense of risk of entering an area in which our legal right to be there is, at best, questionable. In this sense by entering ruins we who are United States citizens will experience – in a very small and trivial way – the sense of foreboding and tentativeness which form a central part of the daily life of an undocumented alien.

Add to this a concern about one’s own physical safety because of the presence of another trespasser (whose motives for trespassing may not match our own). Consider that in some ruins we may be placed in the paradoxical situation of neither desiring an interaction with the police nor desiring an interaction with another trespasser. We suddenly find ourselves in a legal and emotional “twilight zone.” Fortunately for us, the “zone” ends when we return to the public street.

For some adventurers, the excitement produced by all of the above is an end in itself. For the ruins photographer it is a means to an end.


There was a time when ruins photography was novel and unusual. No more. In the past few decades ruins photography and exploration have become a hobby practiced by the masses – with numerous websites devoted to the pursuit of urban adventures. With the photography of ruins now a virtual subgenre of landscape photography, there is no longer much novelty value to a straightforward documentary photo of a ruin – as there might have been a generation ago.

Today, ruins photography has become like any other genre of photography. A contemporary ruins photograph must answer this question: In a sea of similar and competing photographs, how does this one photo stand apart?


I have just been speaking of contemporary ruins photography. But what of historic ruins photographs? (By “historic,” I am referring to photos that are greater than, say, twenty years old.) Historic ruins photos are subject to a different standard entirely.

After all, a critical element of ruins photography is that the subject matter is, almost by definition, ephemeral. Historic ruins photographs are almost always of a subject that no longer exists. That means the photo acquires a distinct historic value – whether or not the photo has any artistic value.

This suggests another hidden allure of ruins photography. And that is: the chance for the photographer to document the ephemeral and to thereby contribute to the historic record a photograph of a subject that no longer exists. Stated in more personal terms, ruins photography is an opportunity for a photographer to create a record of a subject that – with the passage of time – will no longer be available to any other photographer. Instinctively, all photographers value this opportunity – because all photographers aspire to create a unique photograph. To an extent greater than any other form of landscape photography, ruins photography affords the photographer a decided advantage to achieving the elusive goal of a truly unique photograph.


My collection of ruins photos consists of various locations within New York City and the surrounding suburbs from approximately 1980 to the present. In 1980, ruins could be found in vast areas of New York City. Today, physical ruins in the city are difficult to find – with the exception of a few isolated industrial areas. However, ruins continue to exist in great numbers in the surrounding metropolitan area -- especially in the New Jersey Meadowlands and port industrial areas. This photo collection documents the abundant examples of Nineteenth Century industrial archeology in New Jersey and elsewhere that are here today but that may well be gone in a few years or less.