Ruins
There is romance in decay.
Susan Stewart’s The Ruins Lesson unpacks our long obsession with ruins. We are attracted to these places of brokenness, decay, and damage because they are a reminder of our impermanence. They become places of fantasizing. Still alive, we recognize these strewn fragments as building materials. They present a possibility for restoration or repair. We might just be able to reverse them. The ruin is not yet lost, not yet completely dead.
I cling to the cemetery because the act of my documentation means the strangers that I visit are not yet fully forgotten. My attempt at remembrance creates a bridge connecting the worlds of the living and the dead. I do not know what will happen to my photographs, but each time I take one, it is as if I am preserving this link just a little longer. And this means there might be hope for me too. I find relief, even if false, that my death is not my ending, and I can live on through other forms.
There is romance in decay.
Susan Stewart’s The Ruins Lesson unpacks our long obsession with ruins. We are attracted to these places of brokenness, decay, and damage because they are a reminder of our impermanence. They become places of fantasizing. Still alive, we recognize these strewn fragments as building materials. They present a possibility for restoration or repair. We might just be able to reverse them. The ruin is not yet lost, not yet completely dead.
I cling to the cemetery because the act of my documentation means the strangers that I visit are not yet fully forgotten. My attempt at remembrance creates a bridge connecting the worlds of the living and the dead. I do not know what will happen to my photographs, but each time I take one, it is as if I am preserving this link just a little longer. And this means there might be hope for me too. I find relief, even if false, that my death is not my ending, and I can live on through other forms.
Stewart, Susan. The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture. United Kingdom: University of Chicago Press, 2021.