I confess that I have always felt a fascination for abandoned buildings. Walking around with my camera in the countryside of Wisconsin, I came across a dilapidated barn that ended up being the starting point of this series. In the few seconds I prepared for my shot, I realized how that structure had the power to transport me through time.

That experience profoundly impacted me and sent me on a journey through small villages like Mineral Point, Spring Green, and Dodgeville in Wisconsin, as well as other towns in Iowa, South and North Carolina, and Florida. For over five years, I gathered a collection of images of ruined barns, each with a story to tell.

These buildings in decay are containers of their pasts. Each structure holds its own memories and illusions. Their presence allows us to imagine what life must have been like in it. These fantastic places are not graves; they are the rightful guardians of secrets and dreams.

The present is that intimate moment when the ruins and I are alone. It gives me access to those past lives as if they were part of the now. These degraded buildings also represent the future since their condition announces their final disappearance. They are a testimony of the past, the present, and the future in simultaneous coexistence.

With these images, I intend to show the historical connection, the cultural memory, and the mixture of emotions as these structures confront us with the anguish inherent in the finitude of our existence. They remind us of how fragile life is and that after our physical departure nature returns, claiming justice or, more simply, its space. Seeing how nature takes over a place as soon as humans are no longer present, it’s a clear reminder of how everything is transitory.

This project comprises 44 images: 22 buildings accompanied by 22 details of objects or natural elements, all arranged as combinations of two. Each photo detail has been divided into three segments to represent the relentless passage of time as it invites us to wonder about the meaning of life.