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Beneath the Apse. 2012
The first abandoned church I explored thirteen years ago - St. Joseph Byzantine Catholic Church of East Cleveland. This church was unfortunately demolished about nine years ago.
It was one of the first places I decided to write about, because I felt there was a story behind the rotting architecture that should be told. I thought there had to be something about such a historic structure falling apart - and there was.
This was before I started my blog, Architectural Afterlife; before I was able to do what I loved for a living. This was a point where I was actually driving my life into a deep hole, with no clear vision of getting out.
Thankfully, with these places, and through art, I was able to climb out of that point in my life.
At this point in my life, I spent most of my time wandering around these old, crumbling buildings because I felt inspired creatively by the beauty in their decay. Many people didn't understand my fascination with them, or the art I wanted to create with them as the focus. A handful of people around me did, and I saw the popularity in urbex photography at the time in other parts of the world, notably in the UK. The popularity of urbex photography in the UK was what drew my attention to it around 2006, when I was just beginning to share my work over on my profile at DeviantArt.com. Sure, it was popular in smaller crowds in the US and Canada, among other places, but most of what was being shared on DeviantArt came out of the UK.
I started to discover numerous places around me I had never noticed before. Additionally, being so close to one of the major cities in the rust belt provided an urban landscape filled with history through many of its forgotten structures.
I had no intention to write about, or learn about the history of these places until 6 years after I started exploring them - once I started to explore deeper into Cleveland, and see the massive amount of history discarded. It opened my eyes to how many more stories there are to tell about a city like Cleveland; stories that shouldn't be forgotten.
While I've enjoyed doing this for the last 13 years, I've recently decided to shift the focus of my work back to where art was a much stronger focus.
