Field Journal · 37 Entries
Ruins, lost roads and the silence left behind. A photographer's field journal of abandoned places and brutalist architecture — recorded before they are gone.
Enter the index
Fifty-four metres of mirror set into a hillside at 1,700 metres, four thousand panels, a five-metre secondary hanging over the bowl — and nothing wrong with any of it. Switched off in 2012, and nothing has come through it since. It hasn't been abandoned, though. People are still fighting to get it running, and still waiting for someone to fund it.
Slabs of exposed-aggregate concrete raking up out of a hilltop above Knin, with the town laid out in the valley below. The terrace in front of it has gone to ferns and young sumac, and the monument is the only thing left up there that the scrub hasn't managed to close over.
Three years of driving past it on the coast road east of Split before I finally stopped. Every surface has been gone over — tags over pieces over tags, years deep, not a square metre of bare concrete left at standing height. And under all of it the shape hasn't moved an inch — an Adriatic holiday hotel from a country that isn't on the signs any more.
I had wanted this one for a long time and finally got there on the worst possible day for it — rain, and a fog so thick the monument barely existed until I was standing under it. It turned out to be exactly the right weather. A memorial to the 1941 uprising on a forested hilltop in Croatia, stripped back to its frame and gone soft at the edges in the cloud.
Who is behind this
I'm Alexandr — I like to explore unusual places and go on adventures. This is where the stills live.
I build mobile apps — that's the day job. Away from it, I like adventures and exploring: getting out to the places most people drive past. This journal is where that lands — the architecture and abandonment I find, wherever in the world it's still standing. If you'd like an app built, get in touch.