Display of Ruins

One of the recurring themes in the Ghost Town seminar at the Yale School of Architecture is our enduring fascination with ruins and how representations ofabandonment, neglect, and disrepair tend to become depoliticized over time.  Complicated narratives around the causes of ruination are subsumed by their often alluring aesthetics; and indulging in this aesthetic fascination emerges as a distinct privilege enjoyed by those who are distant—physically, temporally, socially—from the very real fallout of economic withdrawal, political violence, social upheaval, and physical destruction.  In this group of essays produced by the Ghost Town seminar students, we attempt to reinvigorate images of ruination with these knotty, nuanced narratives.  

Glasgow “slums” on the verge of destruction in the name of “Improvement.”  Disused industrial relics documented as found sculpture.  A delicate sixteenth century watercolor exploring the visual penumbras and informal uses of Roman ruins.  Large format photographs of the spaces abandoned by the obsolescence of film itself.  Ruins of war; ruins of dispossession; playfulness amongst ruins; the quietude of desolation; remnants of colonial hubris—all of these are contained in this collection, and all the images are drawn from the remarkable collection held at the Yale University Art Gallery.  We are immensely grateful to the YUAG and especially to Paulina Choh, the Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow in Photography, for helping us curate this list and for facilitating our visit to the Duffy Study Room.  

Elihu Rubin