Beautiful, haunting photographs of abandoned places from around the world. The ultimate visual reference in urban exploration.

These outstanding photographic reports aim to draw attention to the often dramatic fate of a country's abandoned heritage and its frequently forgotten beauty. The locations featured all have their own stories to tell, in a variety of voices, but with one shared theme: the fall from grace.

For fifteen years, Francis Meslet explored urban landscapes as a photographer of the poetry of ruins. Drawing on this experience, with the aid of artificial intelligence, he now takes us on a journey to discover an abandoned world in a not-so-distant future.

• Nature relentlessly reclaiming Europe's largest deserted libraries
• Open-air ruins of the most beautiful theatres
• Vast industrial remains frozen in time
• Paris under the threat of missiles
• The ashes of Notre Dame Cathedral which has succumbed to the flames...

Meslet's work is much more than merely imaginary iconographic documentation. It is an attempt to reconcile the future and the past, a meditation on the fragility of collective memory. As a hunter of ephemeral moments, his generative art images reveal the duality of time, the coexistence of decay and splendour. With his keen eye, he has taken on the guise of a poet of decrepitude, capturing the soul of neglect, turning each image into a silent cry in the desert of contemporary indifference.

About the Author
A graduate in Design from the Fine Art School of Nancy, early in his career Francis Meslet was a designer, but soon turned to advertising when he joined several agencies as an artistic director. After 30 years spent questionning the creative concept and studying images in all his compositions, he is now a creative director. Francis does not hesitate to roam the world in his spare time, searching for abandoned sites, sanctuaries where time seems to have stopped after humans have evacuated them. He brings back captivating and melancholic images of his travels to the other side of the world... Like time capsules, testifying to a parallel world and perfect for enabling the mind to wander and ponder, Francis Meslet's melancholic images brave the passage of time, making way for silence after the memories left behind by human inhabitation. In these deserted places, no more than the rustling of the wind can be heard through a broken window or the sound of water dripping from a dilapidated ceiling. These silences nonetheless invite the spectator to slip into these well-guarded and mysterious places captured by the photographer and attempt to bring to life that which has been forgotten. In this power station orders were shouted in German, in this French Catholic school the cries of children resounded to the sound of the bell but who can imagine the sounds hidden behind the walls of this old psychiatric asylum in Italy or on the docks of this abandoned island of Japan? From these silences, everyone can imagine their own interpretations... reinterpretations. https://francismeslet.com/


Book Information
ISBN 9782361957988
Author Francis Meslet
Format Hardback
Page Count 356
Imprint Jonglez
Publisher Jonglez
Weight(grams) 1609g