Each week we browse LiveJournal’s Popular Entries feature to unearth fascinating, obsessive, and sometimes bizarre communities for your perusal. There’s bound to be one just for you.
The apocalypse doesn’t have to be about zombies. Sometimes the most powerful images of post-humanity desolation come from places where civilization has quietly ceased to be.
Many of these images are lovingly archived at ruralRuin. Unlike a similar community, Urban Decay, ruralRuin documents abandoned hallmarks of humanity that photographers find on their more bucolic excursions. As moderator Colbatika wrote:
“[H]ere is a photo journal wherein you may show and share what ruins you find in your rural wanderings… old estates, junkyards, cemeteries, roadside altars, farms, abandoned vehicles, ruined rural oddities of every type shall be appreciated.”
With 4,000 members and 3,000 “watchers,” (LiveJournal’s version of lurkers), ruralRuin is neither enormous nor tiny by LiveJournal standards, though moderator Colbatika told the Daily Dot that it has become significantly less active since its founding in 2003.
It’s a fitting metaphor for a group dedicated to documenting the places people used to be.
Here are three of our favorite recent photos:
An abandoned home in the Russian countryside. Photo via Pultz.
“According to what I heard, this ancient farm was a center of the local French Resistance, during World War II,” wrote photographer Ys_melmoth.
This is a photo of one of four houses photographer JJ MacCrimmon encountered in East Lancaster, California. While the homes still had signs of life—coffee mugs in the cupboard and even a teddy bear—the desert winds were eroding them into nothing.
Photo via Pultz