All posts by Julia Solis

Egyptian Tomb Graffiti

April 13, 2018

  This remote mountain tomb between Thebes and Aswan is intriguing not just for its own decorations but also the stylized old graffiti from explorers and tomb raiders who descended on the Nile Valley following Napoleon's Egypt campaign around 1800. As we can see, Charles Leonard Irby and James Mangles, the authors of "Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria, and the Holy Land" passed through in 1817. There's also a tag by the "Great Belzoni", a former circus entertainer who came to Egypt

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The National in Detroit

December 30, 2017

  It's the Moorish details that make this theater particularly lovely. Built by Albert Kahn in 1911 and closed in 1975, it's the only one of his theaters still standing and the only one left in Detroit's old entertainment district around Monroe Street - but not for long. Current plans are to preserve just the facade and tear down the rest to make room for inevitable new development, a move that Preservation Detroit considers to show a distinct lack of imagination. There are lots of great

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Sprinting out of Time

October 23, 2016

  On a nice Sunday, you can run into all sorts of people wandering and biking around these abandoned sheds. And yet this former barracks complex in the East German countryside is in good shape, considering that the military moved out around the time the wall came down. The bright paint is impressive, as is the attention to style and details in the sparse decor. It looks pretty ready to be turned into a rollerskating rink, with Sputnik tunes and polyester

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Speaking Mutely

September 18, 2016

  “The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.” The words of Heinrich Heine, a 19th century German Romantic poet after whom this hotel in the East German countryside was named. The Heinrich Heine Hotel was demolished in 2016 to make way for another

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The House of Louise

September 17, 2016

  It's rare to find a time capsule that's quite this preserved. An old mansion in Luxembourg has become a museum of family life in pre-WW II Europe. The shelves in the attic were littered with school books, journals, letters, funeral notices and bills. Notebooks from a girl named Louise showed her progress in calligraphy while a young boy in the family was making his first forays into the Hitler Youth. The dates spanned the late 19th century to about the 1950s. The furnishings and

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Toledo Prison Farm

September 15, 2016

  Utterly isolated, apparently untouched for years – this place has the eerie kind of remoteness where every outside sound is startling and the thought of human habitation borders on the absurd. The prison is small and old, a mere aging stain in a perfect countryside, a decaying heap of bricks surrounded by forests and a few tended fields. It’s entirely self-contained, from the dormitories to the kitchen and laundry room, the medical exam area, basement shop and tucked-away jail cells

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Disfigured

September 15, 2016

  Found inside a closet in an old psychiatric ward in Italy. Burnt, painted, scribbled on, these cards have turned into a very personal visual poem over time.        

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A Stage Entombed

September 15, 2016

  The recent demolition of the Fairmont Theater was sad news. Discovering the Fairmont was one of my favorite theater experiences ever. It had all the elements that make up a perfect ruin exploration: adventure, beauty and mystery. It was fun and scary, left a nice coating of moldy air like flocked wallpaper on the inside of my lungs, and happened completely by accident. That this place seemed so utterly forgotten – no interior photos online, at all? – made it all the more novel. The

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Keeping Records

December 5, 2009

    Someone took the warning "Do Not Remove From Hospital" on the patient files a bit too seriously when this place was shuttered. Of course it seems to be a rarity whenever the staff of a closing hospital actually disposes of medical records in a way that keeps them confidential. Usually the echo of the giant "Fuck it" reverberates for years after the doors are slammed shut. Coming across records like this time and again, it was surprising to see what a stir was caused in

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The Orphanage

November 20, 2009

  The German Catholic Orphanage in Buffalo, New York, was built in 1927 and served as a temporary home for thousands of kids over the decades. It's still strikingly pretty, although its chapel (added in 1938) is quickly declining into a vandalized dump site. Its days are numbered anyway; construction and demolition are about to begin to turn the campus into affordable housing. Above, a picture of the chapel from about three years ago; a few recent photos

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... this travelogue

Explorations and ruminations about time capsules near and far, with an eye towards the structures, textures and playgrounds of decay. A companion blog for darkpassage.com.

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