Decomposed

2016

With the photographs in this series, I wanted to achieve the documentation of a deteriorating building of Pittsburgh history.  Inside of this building, there was evidence of papers from the 1970’s, which helped add to my knowledge of the location. The specific building that I photographed was the Larimer School in East Liberty.  This building once had children ready to learn wandering its halls. Now, the halls are filled with dust, paint chips, collapsing ceiling tiles, and lost documents. My inspiration for this series comes from the love for the style of old buildings, especially ones in the process of decomposition in structures that once had life.  These works expand on the meaning of decay, this meaning the walls of buildings that are in almost ruins; paint chips, collapsed floors, plants growing inside, with the burning of the negatives elaborating on this decay aspect of the building.

The burned feature of the photos adds to this idea of decay that once a building is closed, it is up to nature to change the building, and even make it unrecognizable.  This is what I wanted to develop with my photographs. The school photographed is now just left to the world to know its fate and how unidentifiable it will become in future years.