Finding abandoned places is unpredictable. Sometimes, you aren’t looking at all and stumble across them. Other times, if you’re like me, you do research and seek them out. I don’t know if anyone realizes how many are out there—sitting, decaying, waiting…for what?

We build and build and leave our structures to die, allowing them to lose their original purpose and convince ourselves that they are meaningless and wasted. As if we have the power to make whatever we want; to say what matters and what doesn’t.

Humans have always built on top of this earth like they own it. Watching something we have built get left behind, deconstruct, and then reclaimed is as beautiful as it is sad. It is extraordinary to watch the earth take back over the land, enveloping these man-made structures in their leaves and vines almost to say, “You can’t stop me.”

But the earth isn’t the only one reclaiming and repurposing these spaces. Artists, photographers, graffiti writers, people without homes, all find purpose in these places that feel disposable to most. It’s kind of funny how exploring these sites can be considered trespassing when no one seems to want to claim them as their own. Explorers and vagrants make it our own with our contributions to their existence, continued history, and renewed sense of purpose.

Looking through these photographs, I hope you can reconsider spaces like these. For their use, their history, their meaning to people like me, who may see something where others see nothing.