Images from local photographer Robert Marsala’s new book, “In a Different Light: Photographs of Abandonment,” are currently being featured on The Weather Channel’s homepage (http://www.weather.com/travel/abandoned-hospitals-new-york-connecticut-20140527). The photographs, captured in both infrared and digital color, convey the entropy that occurs when nature slowly reclaims once-grand, man-made structures that were filled with people long forgotten over time.
Many of the images are from sites throughout Connecticut and include the former manufacturing building of Anamet, Inc. in Waterbury, Seaside Sanatorium in Waterford, Fairfield Hills in Newtown, and the electric tinsel factory of J. R. Montgomery & Co. in Windsor Locks.
Marsala’s keen sense of unmanipulated composition and dramatic use of ambient light and shadow give the viewer a new slant on a world that, day by day, quietly slips into decay, largely unnoticed. From abandoned state mental hospitals, glass factories, steel-processing furnaces, to industrial manufacturing buildings, Marsala’s images record the silent structures that yet imply the activity and endurance of the human spirit, still very much present among the detritus of an obsolete landscape. The artist invites viewers to explore and enjoy the inherent beauty of abandoned structures in a different light.
“In a Different Light: Photographs of Abandonment” is available in paperback or ebook versions. For more information, or to contact Marsala, visit www.infraredrobert.wordpress.com, www.digital-infrared.com, or email robert@digital-infrared.com.