Glorious Dereliction

Weird artists have often been drawn to forgotten places. Fictional or otherwise, temples to forgotten gods, urban theaters of decay, and the crumbling abodes of aristocrats dot the average weird landscape. The spirit of the past, embedded and trashing around in old ruins, may well be just another facet of the spirit of strangeness manifest in every ghoul, specter, and less mentionable thing. The importance of environment is undeniably important to a good weird story, and a mind-lighting piece of art. This is why H.P. Lovecraft so frequently concocted ancient cities built by pre-human intelligences, century shrouded Medieval manors, and New England colonial icons as atmospheric coffins hiding horror beneath their history and austerity. Shortly before Lovecraft, Arthur Machen put Britain's lonely ruins to paper as unseemly nexuses of wickedness. Today, Thomas Ligotti similarly sets his soul crushing prose in a bleak dreamland of urban decrepitude, obviously inspired by his life in Detroit.

So, the weird reader doesn't merely have an interest in the derelict, but revels in it with every jaunt through the pages of their favorite eldritch tale. The internet's awesome power to bring images of the strange to nearly anyone at the touch of a button is especially useful for weird aficionados trying to understand more about the atmospheric roots of horror. The photography of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre is based in reality, but the places they have cataloged carry an inherent air of the surreal.

In galleries highlighting abandonment and ruin in Detroit, Eastern Germany, and American theaters, one touches the same weird sense that throbs in weird fiction and art. Though often less than a century old, these forgotten pieces of modern living are still well within Lovecraft's meaning of "strange, far places." And with no scheduled revitalization or replacement for many of these tottering buildings, their images suggest they will only become stranger and further removed from a 21st century sense of the norm.

-Grim Blogger