NYTimes | ghost estates

DaireQuinlan

Nice (if brief) photo essay here on irish ghost estates in the nytimes
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/in-ireland-ghosts-of-towns-that-never-were/?hp

Are there any equivalent projects by resident Irish photographers ? I vaguely remember seeing something last year, but it focused more on the unfinished office & residential blocks in and around the cities. The photographer in this case is Swiss/Irish, but doesn't live here.

bullpost

Exhibition in Gallery of Photography at the moment - photos of ghost estates . Not sure if tog is Irish but think so.

sineadw

It's Anthony Haughey. They're beautiful..

sineadw

Here you go : http://anthonyhaughey.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Settlement-Source-Feb-2011.pdf

He photographed everything in early light (or late light? Can't remember..), originally to avoid security guards, but soon realised there were none. You can just do what you want in these places

There was another one a while back of a place in Sligo. Dakar will tell you who did it, can't remember..

DaireQuinlan

sineadw wrote: »

Here you go : http://anthonyhaughey.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Settlement-Source-Feb-2011.pdf

He photographed everything in early light (or late light? Can't remember..), originally to avoid security guards, but soon realised there were none. You can just do what you want in these places

There was another one a while back of a place in Sligo. Dakar will tell you who did it, can't remember..

Ah yeah, I remember reading the Sligo one. It was specific buildings (or a specific building ?) which the photographer had covered, and used bits of the sales brochure blurbs as captions for the shots. The shots were good, but the use of the sales brochures added a kind of smirky gimmicky irony to it that I didn't really like.

DaireQuinlan

Actually, it was this one here I was thinking of ...
http://zxcode.com/2011/05/the-mill-apartments-ballisodare/

I thought I'd read something similar in the IT weekender or something.

magicbastarder

second last shot in the original link is fab.

sineadw

Yep, that's the one Prefer the Haughey myself!

dinneenp

I had an idea for this a while back, posted a thread asking where the ghost estates in Galway are. But never got around to doing it...

Kintarō Hattori

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Nice (if brief) photo essay here on irish ghost estates in the nytimes
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/in-ireland-ghosts-of-towns-that-never-were/?hp

Are there any equivalent projects by resident Irish photographers ? I vaguely remember seeing something last year, but it focused more on the unfinished office & residential blocks in and around the cities. The photographer in this case is Swiss/Irish, but doesn't live here.

I can't believe those photos made it into that article- they're absolutely awful. They look like they could have come from a camera phone as there seems to be minimal effort put into them.

magicbastarder

dinneenp wrote: »

I had an idea for this a while back, posted a thread asking where the ghost estates in Galway are. But never got around to doing it...

it's a well travelled theme, and hard to nail without resorting to the 'bland empty uniformity' aspect, or the 'peeling plaster porn' if you're doing interiors.

af_thefragile

Some of those houses are really nice and almost completely built.
Its a shame no one can live in them...

dazftw

It's been done a few times..

http://kimhaughton.photoshelter.com/gallery/Shadowlands/G0000ChCUrmHIMoY/

magicbastarder

looks like she visited some of the same sites.

If anyone knows of any such places around Drogheda feel free to give me a heads up!

Couldn't care less about the buildings themselves (though it drives me up the walls to see them getting damaged by scumbag bastards!) but such interiors would surely be handy for a bit of portraiture in.

DaireQuinlan

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I can't believe those photos made it into that article- they're absolutely awful. They look like they could have come from a camera phone as there seems to be minimal effort put into them.

I'd imagine quite a lot of effort went into them, and these are an edited selection out of a much larger bunch of shots. You might not like the aesthetic but dismissing them out of hand is a little churlish.

Besides that, they're part of a body of work. They have context and a narrative, you can't really consider each one individually, they have to be appreciated as parts of a whole.

Kintarō Hattori

I do get what you're saying Daire and I feel the subject is an excellent one that could yield excellent results. I can't help but feel though that little effort was put into taking the actual photos.

That's just what I think though and I'll freely admit I frequently don't get/care for the artsy side of photography.

thebaz

ghost estate debris

BlastedGlute

There's a few around me here in Galway. I guess I could go take a few snaps as more of a share than of me trying to get great photos from it. I don't even know where to start with landscape photography so don't expect much. Some pretty pitiful sights though. One in particular is just insane to think that they got so close to completion but that nobody could front the money to just fookin finish!

Gregor Samsa

5, 8 and 13 don't exactly look abandoned to me. The lawns are in better shape than my own. 13, there seems to be items in some of the windows (top centre window of house with Green door, top bay window of cut-off house on right), and the house with the yellow door on the left has potted plants outside it.

Number 2 actually looks like a mature estate: There's trees growing in some of the gardens - one of them looks about 20 foot high. OK, the house on the right looks neglected, but it's the only one. That hardly makes it a "Ghost Estate". Looks like she just got a regular estate on a misty day.

Maybe it's just the ones that the NY Times chose, but shots like this ruin the narrative for me.

thedarkroom

thebaz wrote: »

ghost estate debris . .

Now that's scary. There was a lot in the media about making the estates secure to stop people, particularly children roaming around and possibly getting injured. This picture says it all. You should send this to the local authority to emphasise the importance of keeping people out of these death traps.

thebaz

thedarkroom wrote: »

Now that's scary. There was a lot in the media about making the estates secure to stop people, particularly children roaming around and possibly getting injured. This picture says it all. You should send this to the local authority to emphasise the importance of keeping people out of these death traps.

to me thats the real damage of the recession, empty buildings and homelessness don't equate - people all over Ireland are hurting today - hopefully things improve for everyone