These places aren't graves, they're secret histories waiting to be read. I can spend hours just walking the rooms and floors. I believe that these buildings have a soul, and when I photograph these places I try to capture a piece of that soul
boredpanda.com, 2016, Christian Richter
"Abandoned photography is my ongoing project and now I travel around Europe looking for abandoned buildings" - Christian Richter
WEEK 14
What were your successes? I was at first having trouble coming up with an idea for my final project and the story I wanted to tell. I finally decide upon “Life during COVID” and trying to capture how life has changed in such a short time during the current COVID crisis. I think I was able to capture the changes to everyday life and our social patterns as well as capturing how the human spirit carries on and adapts to the change.
What were your challenges? The challenge was to find really good images of the social changes. I also ran into a challenge in one store where I was taking pictures when the manager yelled at me after saying it was ok to take some pics and I also asked the subjects for their permission.
What artist are you following? Christian Richter is a German photographer who was born in the then German Democratic Republic (GDR) and started exploring abandoned buildings after the Berlin wall well in 1989 and Germany was reunited. He began taking amateur pictures of these structures with a small digital camera that a friend gave him which began his love of photography and led to a successful career as fine art photographer. The Abandoned series began in 2011. Richter has broken into more than 1000 buildings in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Poland. His friends suggest places for him to visit where he tries capture their "swan song" for his Abandoned series. I think his work is amazing and his story really interesting. He was 14 when the collapse of communism fell in East Germany. The pictures of the abandoned buildings are intriguing and haunting. They make me think about who lived, played and worked in the places his photos capture.










