The World of Urban Decay 2 from Martin ten Bouwhuijs is a hauntingly beautiful collection of photographs of buildings that have been neglected and are slowly reaching the point beyond which they will be unrecoverable. There is certainly a lot of beauty here but the images also stir a great deal of thoughts that might best be termed melancholy.

Different people can and likely will get different things from this book. The photographs are wonderful for those primarily interested in the art of photography. The pictures are lovingly framed and captured to best bring some idea of life back to the dead buildings. The notes at the end serves to give the images a bit more historical context for those wanting a more contextualized experience.

I tend to view these types of photographs and imagine what they might look like if they were again peopled. Think of the film "The Shining" without the supernatural aspects, or maybe with them, who knows. Places where people went to relax, or work or even be incarcerated. The number of hopes and dreams, as well as the tragedy and turmoil, that were experienced in these places come to my mind. These buildings and what they represented to those people probably seemed solid and forever yet here are those buildings, like many of those hopes and dreams, decaying and abandoned.

I would recommend this to anyone who fits any of the above types, as well as anyone who just likes to look at photographs of architecture.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss. ( )