There is something about ruins and abandoned spaces. In his article, “Returning to Where We Have Never Been: Excavating the Ruins of Modernity,” Gonzalaez-Ruibal properly notes that ruins and abandoned spaces often evoke strong feelings and makes us think about issues like decay, decadence, ephemerality, dystopia or failure. This is certainly why such places appeal to me.
Contemporary ruins however pose problems for urban managers and community caretakers that are often “solved” through efforts to renew urban spaces for what what might be considered more productive and wholesome uses. This overwriting of urban spaces has intrigued me as a palimpsestic process that reuses and often redefines the space as something related to and yet alternative to what came before. In a series of photographs, I've tried to capture phases of the erasure of a particular urban palimpsest.
The Brach Candy Factory on the west side of Chicago.