It is not unusual to stumble on the Internet upon sites or Instagram pages featuring images of abandoned and derelict places.
Buildings full of debris, dusty houses long abandoned by its inhabitants and frozen in time, schools covered in graffiti but with no students noisily laughing or running around, and empty churches with no prayers resonating in the air, have become particularly popular, especially around Halloween when they evoke scenes from horror movies. Yet not all of these images are as beautifully composed as the ones by French photographer Aurélien Villette.
A volume entitled Spirit of Place (scheduled to be published by teNeues in January 2015), collects Villette's pictures of dilapidated buildings.
In Latin the "genius loci" is the guardian and protective "spirit of a place" that Villette tries to capture in the most desolate spaces.
Alexander Pope made the Genius Loci an important principle in garden and landscape design writing to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington: "Consult the genius of the place in all" and Villette does consult it a wonderful way.
Throughout the years, Villette has taken pictures of hundreds of mysterious buildings, from Christian chapels to theatres, from libraries to the events centre (Dogma) in a former Communist country.
There is a sense of fear, sadness, loneliness and nostalgia in the spooky and eerie atmospheres captured by Villette, though there is also something else, an attention to architectural history. In the images collected in this volume, Villette portrays indeed the spaces as witnesses of a bygone era, relics that define the history of a country, turning into cultural heirlooms of the various periods and places where they are located.
Ignore the crumbling ceilings, rotting chairs and lamps, peeling walls and dusty spaces or scattered belongings of the former occupants, and you will be able to trace intriguing architectural elements, staircases and domes, decorated ceilings and elegantly curved balconies, Art Nouveau doors and pastel coloured frescoes.
As Villette claims in a statement accompanying his images: "Some architectural elements are particularly interesting to me, like staircases, which testify to the evolution of a society and a culture. Besides aesthetics, geopolitical criteria comes into play. I seek to demonstrate that the abandoned nature of these sites is intimately connected to human activities and to historical context. I strive to understand the evolution of the world, of politics, people and their destinies."
Battered by heavy winds and rain, eroded by time, littered with trash and covered in dust, these spaces turn into architecturally monumental tributes to decay and witnesses to a faded human grandeur. A volume dedicated to photography and architecture fans, but also ideal for all those people interested in art and design and fascinated by exploring the theme of the genius loci and by how it profoundly affects us all.
Spirit of Place by Aurélien Villette, to be published by teNeues in January 2015.
Image credits for this post
All images © Spirit of Place by Aurélien Villette, teNeues 2015. Photo © 2015 Aurélien Villette and YellowKorner. All rights reserved.
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