In his eccentrically brilliant book on twentieth-century US photography The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer suggests that all empty rooms are, in a sense, waiting rooms: "They wait for us to keep them company, to bring them back to life."
In one respect, the rooms pictured in James Lacey's A World In Ruins are waiting in vain - the buildings in which they are situated having been abandoned. And yet in another respect, they've been waiting for Lacey's lens to "bring them back to life".
What the camera cannot capture is what precisely led to the buildings' abandonment and subsequent decline. Crumbling institutions and decaying grandeur are one thing, but the portraits propped on mantlepieces and personal possessions left behind in what were formerly family homes are more poignant.
As I suggest in my Buzz review, A World In Ruins - while not perfect - illustrates architectural disintegration while also hinting at the human narratives that stand behind it.
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