Dark Park

My hero Troy Paiva is still out every full moon to catch his vision of Lost America. Between releasing two books ("Lost America" and "Night Visions") he is kind enough to share his amazing work on his Flickr-site.




His nocturnal journeys have recently led him to one of my favourite subjects: An abandoned amusement park! I posted a selection of a similar project by another photographer recently, but when Mr. Paiva clicks his way through a lost and dark fun-park, it is sure to be something special.



I would love to invite Troy Paiva to come to Berlin to pay a full-moon visit to the spectacularly creepy "Spree Park", the former East-German amusement park which is left to rot since 2001!


Click pics to enlarge!

Bunker Beauties

Philosopher, media theorist and art critic Paul Virilio started taking photos of "The Atlantic Wall", the bunker defense system along the French coast in 1958. Over many years he returned to the abandoned concrete giants that had been built during WW2. In the 1970s he collected the photos with his essays in his book "Bunker Archeology"








(click for bigger bunkers)

Pacific Ocean Park (Pt. 3) - In Ruins

After Pacific Ocean Park closed it´s doors forever in late 1967 the era of the so called "Coney Island if the Pacific" came to a sad end.
Due to urban re-development the area around the pier became a seedy place. With the closing of P.O.P, the decay of the neighbouring area called Dogtown got worse.


All sellable assets of P.O.P were auctioned off (parts of the Hawaiian tiki decoration of the "Mystery Island Banana Train Ride" later turned up in one of Germany´s first theme parks). Since some rides were too old and too heavy, they were left to rot on the pier. So the massive "Mahi Mahi"-Tower, which had served as an impressive backdrop for the showdown of "The Fugitive" a few months earlier became an eerie landmark of the abandoned funland.


The dilapidated pier was not only dangerous because of the crumbling wood, it was also a hide-away for several outcasts. Among them were the surfers of Dogtown who would later move to the empty canals and swimming pools of Venice Beach to famously swap their surfboards for skateboards.


As far as I know, Hollywood had also lost its interest in P.O.P. Only a 1972 French/American co-production used the ruins of the pier for an effective showdown: Une homme est mort (aka "The Outside Man") featured Jean Louis Trintignant as a French contract killer who is lost in L.A while trying to do his job. Sadly the movie, which also features Anne Margret, Angie Dickinson and Roy Scheider, is not available on DVD. As mentioned before, the quiet showdown in the sun drenched ruins of the amusement pier us very haunting.


Finally the city of Venice decided to get rid of the "eyesore" and by 1975 all traces of the pier had disappeared. Since debris and stilts are still lying in the water, it is still forbidden to swim and surf where the pier once stood.


Check these great sites about P.O.P: Rest in Peace - Pacific Ocean Park and The underground website of P.O.P..
Part 1&2 of my P.O.P-trilogy here and here

Joyland after Dark

As soon as an amusement park is closed or abandoned it is transformed into a surreal place with a fascinating and eerie aura.

Joyland in Wichita, Kansas closed its gates in 2004 after 54 years of operation. There are still attempts to re-open the park but it is currently dormant.

These are a couple of photos which were taken in the abandoned park in it´s current state. The photographer uses a similar "light painting"-technique as legendary Troy Paiva.
Long exposure and coloured gel lights create the superbly eerie atmosphere in these photos. (click on them for bigger fun!)







See more photos from this set and others from Josh.

New Clear Fun

One of the most bizarre amusement parks on the planet (besides the one in Chernobyl and "Funland" in Drumheller, Canada) has to be
Wunderland Kalkar (formerly: "Kernwasser Wunderland") in Kalkar, Germany.

It started its life as a breeder-reactor! Shortly before its completion it became one of the most expensive ruins when numerous protests, the Chernobyl disaster and political queeries made it difficult to justify its existence.

Enter Dutch businessman Hennie van der Most: He bought the whole ruin (minus the nuclear stuff) for just € 2.5 Million and converted into a hotel and fun-park.
His early plans of building a rollercoaster-dark-ride through the spooky, labyrinthine hallways of the reactor came to a halt when he was confronted with the insane building-requirements in Germany.


Poor Henny was close to call it a day, when he famously gave an interview in which he nagged about the German bureaucrazy. Apparantly placing some flower-pots on a 3 meter (10 ft.) thick concrete-slab required permission from various building-authorities!

Of course Henny was also aware that the ambience of his artificial paradise left something to be desired. Despite being beautifully located at the edge of the Rhine-River, the massive cryptic architecture of the plant overshadowed virtually any idea of family-fun.


With all-inclusive offerings (all-inclusive means: food and especially alcohol) he somehow managed to fill his bunker-hotel with groups of low-level business travellers. I remember reading great articles about the drinking binges that apparently happened there. It seems that people had to get drunk incredibly fast to withstand the feeling of opression and eeriness that "radiated" from the whole place.

The park is now in its 13th year of operation, catering to families who can´t afford a day at one of the upscale German and Dutch amusement-parks in the area. Looking at new pictures, it seems that they somehow manage to blend out the buildings by simply throwing lots of paint on them.
Besides, after a place has been used for a different purpose long enough, the "old ghosts" seem to vanish.

Still, the idea of putting an amusement-park into an atomic powerplant is awesome, even if the outcome is a bit underwhelming.

In case you didn´t notice already: Every first picture is from the park, contrasted with a still-shot from Terry Gilliam´s "Brazil" (Click to enlarge).

Lost in the Night: The amazing work of Troy Paiva

The magic night-photography of Troy Paiva is sealed in my head since I saw his pictures for the very first time.

Nice pictures of ruins, forgotten and abandoned places always hold a special interest for me (and many others), but Troy Pavia´s photos are much, much more than that!



Everything about his "night paintings" opens up new worlds in an already forgotten one. New geometries and new meanings unfold within and around his chosen subjects.

Paiva is an "UrbEx", an urban explorer, who goes out of his way to find the ruins of the 20th Century. Abandoned motels, empty swimming pools, forgotten and left behind machinery in the desert, broken neonsigns and junkyards of the apocalypse of planned obsolescence.



This list alone makes my ballardian mind reel, but apart from the attractive choice of his subjects, Paiva´s technique brings new life to these dead objects. Because most of the areas he is shooting at are off limits, he is forced to shoot at night, without bright flashes, without complicated set-ups and with the full moon as his main source of light!

In fact, most of his work is done with long exposure times between two and ten minutes. During this time, Paiva "paints" his pictures with the help of one or two gel coloured flash lights or a strobe. The rest is just the natural light of the moon or the glow of far away cities.



According to Paiva the photos are not treated after the principal photography is done. Apart from minor corrections there is no extensive photoshopping, no re-touching or dark-room gimmicks! They are deep excursions into the art of darkness.



Paiva´s light painted objects almost glow from the inside. Everything is ultra-sharp and lit as if bathed in an alien light.



Broken dashboards of decayed limousines resemble mysterious space-ship-commando bridges.



Dissected 747s, beached for decades, are shining like new under the desert moon. They appear as if they are waiting to be picked up by excentric customers from this supermarket of the bizarre. Unable to ever fly again they now pose vainly for their final close-ups.



Rusty and deformed signs, that have long lost their messages seem to stretch towards the sky like antennas reaching for faint signals.



In my mind I have often designed invsible sleeves to non-existing records with these pictures and I more than once wanted to write a post about his work.
Somehow I could never find the right angle to do so. Tagging a selection of pictures with some Ballard-quotes always seemed too simple, even for my standards.



So I was amazed that the wonderful people at Ballardian found a better way to celebrate Paiva´s work. They tagged his paintings with some Ballard-quotes AND did an Interview with him in which they asked him about his affinity with Ballards work.

Brilliantly naming it The Light-Painter of Mojave D, a clever hint at one of the Stellavista-stories "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" It´s a great read and gives a very good insight in the way Troy Paiva works. Interestingly Paiva´s brother is also a professional "night photographer" and a look at his pictures shows that you can do the same thing without it ever being the same.



Paiva has published "Lost America", a book of his work in 2003 and his second one, "Night Visions" is about to come out within the next weeks. There is also a chance to get a limited supply of autographed copies. Go here for further information and links to buy/pre-order his books and prints of all of his photos!

A sheer endless supply of his work can be also marvelled at on Troy´s Flickr site.
Get lost!



Click pics for large size or visit the linked sites!