Beautiful Ugliness

Secret Garden from Realtor's Journal by Danuta Antas, 2010

Generally, I love shooting beautiful landscapes, plants, flowers, etc, but I feel some special bond to things that are abandoned; things that are considered ugly and useless. This kind of interest developed gradually, while I have been travelling around a country with my beloved Andrew, who is a realtor and for his job he often makes business trips. Me?:) ... taking advantage of the opportunity and taking my camera with me for shooting unexpected treasures human dwellings unveil in front of us.

I have even created a series of works in my portfolio I call Realtor's Journal where there are some of my ugly discoveries. Some of them stole my heart, like the disappearing house in the photo below that is almost devoured by growing plants around it and from the inside. Looking at what is left from the house, once populated by an ordinary family with its joys and sorrows, makes me think of unknown people, makes me ponder on time elapsing, on how fragile our life is. I have impression that people leave some sort of presence in all the places they used to be. I feel that their thouhts and feelings, their energy still wander there. Although empty, abandoned, these places have lots of life for me. It is what I try to show in my photography.

These unique feeling of invisible presence that comes with a beam of sun sliding over a texture of a wooden fence or door, or a small flower growing between rocks. Almost everything brings life and human faces into my mind.

I would love to share my works with you and to learn your opinion on the works below. If you enjoy the theme of abandoned houses, buildings, you may find more works of the kind on my personal website.