atoposes, poetic spaces, and modern ruins: surrealist urban exploration, industrial archaeology

Introduction

The collections of urban exploration photographs on this page show an assortment of urban ruins, atoposes and other poetic sites visited and photographed, predominantly in California.

By way of terminology, the "ruins" described here are mostly the remains of urban buildings and dwellings. The majority of them are fairly recent, in that they have been abandoned to the elements for only a few decades. Compared to other parts of the "civilized" world, the abandoned elements of California are very, very modern, with relatively little history when compared with ruins found on the East Coast of the United States, or some of the ruined places in Europe or perhaps the extremely ancient sites in the Middle East, for example. Nevertheless, the West Coast images documented within surrealcoconut certainly have their share of interesting artifacts, entropic processes of nature and other mysteries of the interactive, collective unconscious psyche.

There are some people who do not understand the appeal of an abandoned building or a ghost town. It has only been in recent years that the phrase "urban exploration" has taken on its present meaning. What could really be so fascinating about wandering through partially destroyed and now-abandoned concrete and synthetic foundations of human existence?

For some, the justification of urban exploration resides in the thrill of transgression, of breaking the rules of forbiddeness defined by the state, of going places "where you're not supposed to go", of disregarding the arbitrary law of "private property." For others, the thrill of possible physical danger, such as exploring active subway tracks, is what motivates the excursion. Other times, the pleasure of adrenaline release from penetrating dark, fear-inspiring places is what fuels the pursuit. Still there are some who enjoy bringing their significant other to an abandoned site just for romantic purposes. Apparently there are many varieties of pleasure that appeal to these individuals who explore the ruined buildings of urban life. With the rise of the internet and subsequent mass-availability of digital photography, this obsessive activity known as "urban exploration" has mushroomed over the past few years.

While I cannot deny my own personal interest in some of these various "thrills" (in various guises, of course), the real motivation is the exploration of the gothic element, as it is constructed by the collective psyche of all those who visit "the urban ruin" and interact with and transform its constitutive elements. In this respect, the urban exploration documented here takes on a surrealist dimension, in that the ruins, and the found and vandalized objects within these environments, are considered to be objects of desire, and objects of haunting. These objects and poetic spaces are special because they influence all those who encounter them, and simultaneously, they are transformed by the subversive hands of those who find them in the solitude of social neglect, when no one is looking. Therefore these various ruins are the perfect breeding grounds for the surrealist found object.

From the gothic standpoint, many of these ruins have the power to evoke a questioning of the permanence and future of industrialism, an environment-unfriendly and people-destroying process first set into motion by capitalism. Images of crumbling buildings, mutating offices, long-disrupted places of manual labor, all serve to suggest the ephemeral nature of alienated labor and private property (whether privately owned by a person or by the state), much to the disappointment of so many terrified, conservative minds. In their own special way, these places poetically serve to frame the period of industrial stagnation (and capitalist decline, in many places) — the era of right now — in a way that suggests that the "civilized" human needs to evolve in favor of non-exploitative and less self-destructive ways of life.

The process of urban exploration is also capable of revealing more than just bare walls and terrible buildings. In particular, this kind of physical inquiry is anthropological in nature, in that ruined and abandoned areas are analyzed in terms of what they represent socially, and their relation to society, and in revealing some of the underlying cultural forces within those societies (especially the sometimes embarrassing tendencies that the respected voices of the establishment fail to acknowledge). In this special light, the abandoned space represents a means of measuring the pulse of any culture, by comparing what people say and do in the solitude of ruins, with what they don't say or do in public, with all of the order and repression maintained within the latter. Surrealism is extremely interested in any phenomenon or method of inquiry which can lead to the revelation of the latent thought of a culture, and not just the consciously crafted, manifest rhetoric that shows up on the television screens and online sources of that culture.

Dialectically, the pursuit of industrial archaeology yields traces of the poetically defused, historical materialism of any finished era, in the way an oyster eventually transforms an irritating grain of sand into a resplendent pearl. In the "gothic" sense, the ruins are haunted by the subjective ghosts of past oppression and tyrrany. The forces of disrespect, exploitation and persecution are reduced to roaming ghosts which populate the lonely hallways. A terrible institution becomes a teetering shadow of its former self. Once unchecked cultural menaces are neutralized with physical reminders of their own mortality, and institutions of terror are immobilized by their own forgetfulness, with the permanent scars of obsolescence. In California, we often see the remains of the cold war, for example.

The handwriting is on the wall, even though there is nothing for sale.

These specifically surrealist journeys through urban ruins have nothing to do with 'Art' or 'Literature'.

Northern California & San Francisco Bay Area:

The San Francisco Bay area has many abandoned sites to offer the urban explorer. While this area is currently categorized as one of quick and extensive economic growth (leading to the steady razing of old and useless buildings), there are still several abandoned structures and areas to be found. This part of the United States West Coast, in particular, owes much of its development to the World War 2 era, when the federal government pumped in a lot of money to further their capitalist war effort. One result of this growth history is a strong industrial and manufacturing presence, which of course leads to many industrial artifacts of interest to surrealists and to anyone else with an interest in modern anthropology.

By no means intended to be the definitive collection of bay area industrial archaeology, this meager assemblage of places featured here is intended to convey a flavor of what can be found in Northern California. There still remains much to be explored in this area, assuming that new property owners won't tear down the old buildings tomorrow....

Brisbane Railroad Area. An area in Brisbane (just south of SF) with abandoned railroad artifacts and some ruined industrial buildings.

Abandoned WWII era gun turret near Montara, CA

Montara. An abandoned WW2-era gun turret.

$Moss Landing Mineral Refractory, CA$

Moss Landing Mineral Refractory. An old mineral processing plant a little north of Monterrey, now demolished.

____

Abandoned farm houses in the Santa Cruz, CA area, off highway 1

Santa Cruz Farmhouses. An exploration of a couple of discarded farmhouses in the Santa Cruz area.

Bair Island . This place is near Redwood City and has many dried up streams that are now magical walkways paved with sparkling crystals of salt and other mysteries.

Marin Headlands. Directly north of San Francisco, the Marin Headlands have many ruins of defensive structures designed to prevent against invasion during World War 2 .

San Gregorio. Some countryfied cottages swallowed up by the surrounding plantlife, with a scenic view of the coast. A photographic exploration of a poetic space.

Angel Island. An exploration of military ruins on an island just north of San Francisco.

San Francisco:

Abandoned Powerplant inSan Francisco. An abandoned powerstation on the edge of the city, near Potrero Hill.

Abandoned Factory in San Francisco. A tour through the remains of the Washington Packing Corporation, a tunafish canning factory that was closed 4 decades ago.

Sutro Baths, San Francisco. The ruins of a once-famous recreation area in San Francisco.

____

East Bay:

Drawbridge, CA. A ghost-town that is slowly sinking into the mud, on the southeast part of the bay.

Point Pinole. Near Richmond, in the northern part of the bay. Gunpowder used to be made here.

Newark Saltlands . Tucked away next to the Dumbarton bridge near Newark are forgotten fields of saline mud. Many fragments of structures remain, including an abandoned RR bridge...

____

Point Molate. Abandoned naval base, once used for fuel storage. Now it's a fenced-off ghost-town.

Alviso . A town on the southern edge of SF bay, showing signs of abandonment and reclamation by nature...

Ford Assembly Plant, Richmond. A WW2-era ford assembly plant. Now being converted to a museum-style historical reification, sadly enough.

Point San Pablo. A secluded boating town in the North bay. Once the home of the last whaling dock in the United States.

Abandoned train station in Oakland . Visit an abandoned Amtrak train station in West Oakland, on 17th street.

Byron Hot Springs. An old hotel out in the middle of nowhere, once frequented by movie stars and nazi prisoners.

Fort Ord, near Monterey:

In its rotted, deserted state, the Fort Ord military base just north of Monterey is a gothic treasure of modernity, a paradise necropolis for the taking. While the base is slowly but surely being converted to university campus, there still remain many of the original buildings and structures, completely deserted and poetically festering, and contradicted by the occasional jogger and passing cop car. While abandoned for not more than 10 years, the town has become run down. Paint flakes from rotting, sun-bleached wood, and graffiti and signs of homeless activity abound, by way of breached doors that should have been locked, and shattered windows. For a group of military structures, which also include vast housing units, there exists quite a degree of diversity within this empty landscape.

One of the surprising outcomes of exploring such a magnificent"necropolitan paradise" is that the visitor can wander aimlessly from hall to hall, building to building for hours, and yet the time can pass very quickly during the process of exploration. In some areas, the passage of time is meaningless, while the solitude experienced in old chairs, old offices, old stairwells, is supreme. Fort Ord is remarkable in that it is a useless space of vast proportion that is encapsulating, blocking out the busy noise of the surrounding humanity, yet with a strange life of its own.

Barracks. Carbon-copy buildings of derelict oddities.

Boiler Room. A peek inside of a large boiler room, next to the post-laundry facility.

Chapel. One of the several carbon-copy chapels at Fort Ord.

Machine Shop. A Machine repair area. One of the buildings has some interesting graffiti art.

Maintenance. A weird maintenance building, with vandalized machines inside.

Post-Laundry. An eerie, uh, building.

Military Prison 1. First series of photographs from the prison.

Military Prison 2. Second collection of prison pictures.

Residential areas 1. Images of various housing structures.

Residential Areas 2. Images of various housing structures, part 2.

Theater. A large moviehouse found on the base.

Thriftshop. Although the thriftshop was boarded shut, it was still possible to peek through the windows.

____

Training Facilities. Take a look at the training facilities and bunkers.

Warehouse 1. First set of images from Fort Ord's extensive warehouse system.

Warehouse 2. Second set of warehouse photos.

Southern California:

Bakersfield Auto Shop. A small but interesting autoshop right off of hwy 68.

Farm in Coalinga. A sad little animal farm left to rot. Dead machines in the backyard!

House in Devil's Den. A trashed house in a tiny town called Devils Den, CA.

Llano Socialist Colony. The scant ruins of an early 20th century socialist colony in the Western Mojave Desert.

Marineland. An old amusement park near Palos Verdes Estates, just south-west of LA.

Airplane Graveyard . A fenced-off airplane graveyard in Mojave.

Barn near Monolith, CA. A weird barn near Monolith, totally spewing forth old machinery and junk.

New Idria . A tour through the Rotary Furnace Building of an abandoned mining town.

Derelict Hospital near Los Angeles:

Near Downey, California (a suburb of Los Angeles) there is an abandoned hospital campus situated near a residential area. From random clues and records found at this site, it appears as if the hospital has been abandoned for at least 10 years. Already the buildings show signs of advanced aging, by way of vandalism, marauding plant growth, leaky rooves and overall neglect.

Each of the areas featured on this website demonstrate the decay of institutionalized order, showing a dead world over-run by nature and the subversive, sometimes poetic forces of youth. This place is a cauldron of poetic spaces.

Admin buildings. A journey through some forgotten administration buildings.

Examination Buildings. A series of what might have been medical examination buildings.

Exterior 1. Images of what the medical buildings looked like from the outside.

Linen Storage. A linen and storage building. Creepy place.

Exterior 2. A series of images of the facilities buildings.

Auditorium. The loneliness of a sealed auditorium, where loud music and images once played.

Convalescent Home 1. Scenes from an abandoned recovery house on the Rancho Amigos site.

Convalescent Home 2. Second set of photos from the recovery house.

Medical Laboratory. A hospital lab, completely trashed, with lab equipment strewn everywhere.

Dormitory. Possibly a campus dorm, next to the hospital.

Gulf Coast:

By far, not very extensive, this meagerly-modest collection of photo-sites gives a faint flavor of Gulf Coast ruins, particularly those in New Orleans, Louisiana. Newest additions feature images from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina (2005) in New Orleans.

After Hurricane Katrina, part 1. Images of "post-hurricane archaeology" in New Orleans. Some haunting objects.

After Hurricane Katrina, part 2 . Images of the streets & damaged buildings after the floodwaters receded.

Falstaff Brewery, New Orleans . A failed quest to see a capitalist brewery. Outside building shots only.

Lincoln Beach, New Orleans. A stroll through an amusement park, abandoned since the 1960s.

Old Spanish Fort, City Park, New Orleans

Old Spanish Fort. Images of the remains of an old military fort/amusement park. Not very much to see, but still worth the look.

Abandoned project housing in New Orleans

New Orleans Project Housing. An ever so brief visit to one of the housing projects on the edge of New Orleans East.

Tchoupitoulas Street, warehouse district in New Orleans

Tchoupitoulas Street. A quick trip through the New Orleans warehouse district.

Miscellaneous:

The photos in this "miscellaneous" section are interesting little odds and ends found at some of the various abandoned/poetic sites featured above. In some cases, they represent a collection or synthesis of materials grouped according to a common characteristic or scheme. In other cases, there are collections of random objects, such as the fragments page. Basically, anything that does not belong with the various groups listed above is placed within this section.

Convent. The remains of a burned convent in an isolated Connecticut mansion. The first urban exploration I ever did.

Forgotten Toilets. A collection of toilet pictures from various UE sites. A must-see for people of all ages and moral persuasions.

Fragments. Isolated images from various places.

Dead Machines. Objects that have become poetic through their disintegration at the hands of nature.