A PARADISE LOST

Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdus. 
(The only paradise is paradise lost)
- Marcel Proust-

In summer of 2011 I made repeat visits to Governors Island, drawn to the vulnerability and mournfulness of the deserted buildings edging into deterioration. Worn-out floor boards that creakily recount every single step, whispering draft that breathes through the leaking window frames into the abandoned rooms, peeling paint and crumbling plaster that disclose the wooden and red brick skeletons, rusty fixtures that gnarl their restraint memories evoke a feeling of being an intruder into a land that hid itself from time.

The images of the series do not claim to document architecture they are rather a response to the ghostly traces of human civilization that endured and the remnants of residential architecture that lost it's function over a long period of desertion.

A Paradise Lost

Before the street grids, urban planning and landfills, before the concrete, brick or asphalt, before the fountains, parks and gardens, before the honking, crackle and rumble there was wilderness. The modern metropolises now densely filled with people and infrastructure were once remarkable diverse prodigious landscapes of old growth forests, valleys, hills, fields, springs, ponds and rivers. 
In:Wood is an ongoing series of photographs, all taken with a 4x5 inch view camera, that reveals unexpected scenes of seclusion, intimate vistas of silent woods, meandering streams and depicts the vastness, pureness and the mystical that still remains adjacent to the bustle of the mega-cities.

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Alexandra Knospe

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