Art & Architecture: Decay / Matthias Haker

These walls speak. People lived here. They cried and laughed here. And, there were feasts, balls, kisses, nightmares and sorrow there. Great stories and small, everyday moments buried under the weight of extinction, under the shadows of decay.

A sort of apocalyptic scent dances with the fallen leaves that gather into piles against the walls and between the winding staircases. Something both scary and attractive drives you towards a scenery in twilight, into the architecture’s agony.

But these are not ruins. Not just a bunch of stones proudly displayed in the middle of a square, surrounded by a mob of tourists, cameras in hand. Their erosion is not covered by the make-up of restorations, like an old lady still trying to be young, running from the inexorable passage of time.

These buildings aren’t dressed in vanity, but hide their secrets in shadows. But there is beauty to be found in their abandonment, an intimate beauty revealed by the German photographer Matthias Haker, who fights for the preservation of their slow-paced decay, capturing it in his photography and keeping the location of such architectural Venuses a secret.