The Beauty of Rural Decay

Perhaps a little known fact about me is I really love the unique beauty of urban decay, but in my case, it’s rural decay. In the south, as is the case virtually all over the world, you see abandoned buildings, houses, and various different structures that are being reclaimed by nature. You’ve heard of “urban decay photography,” sometimes referred to as urban exploration, urbex, or UE, which is the exploration of those various places, but you rarely hear of “rural decay” exploration. Probably because most people don’t live in the rural backwoods of wherever, they live in the city.

For those of us who do spend most of our days in the rural south, little abandoned houses, barns, sheds, and all kinds of structures are literally everywhere. Sometimes you have to look pretty hard because they have been completely reclaimed by the trees like the first image above. Barely visible from the road, it was probably once a small house sitting on the road on the way to town. Today it’s being consumed by the land.

The ones below is one that is more well kept in a family cemetery adjacent to our property. I’ve taken this little house for years now and always seem to be able to keep capturing something new about it. I love the stories they tell, the history they’ve seen. Below is a collection of what I refer to as “Structure 1.100,” which is just the number I give it in my catalog so I know which is which. The one above had some kind of not-so-happy-animal guarding it so interior images will have to wait for another day. Next time you drive to work count how many of these types of structures you see, I bet you would be surprised.