GHOST ESTATES, THE BOOK
GHOST ESTATES
Valérie Anex
Les éditions d’Uqbar, 2013
84 pages, 48 photographies
25.5 x 19.6 cm, hardcover
30 EUR / commande@uqbar.ch
ISBN 978-2-8399-1169-6
www.uqbar.ch
Beyond the freshly tarmaced
road lies only a wasteland. The Ghost
Estates cover photography shows that
the project envisaged for this plot of
land has not come to fruition. It seems
that this space should have been occupied
by a detached home, completing
the cul-de-sac. When the “housing
bubble” burst in 2008, activity on building
sites suddenly stopped. At this
stage, the Irish landscape was already
covered by over three thousand unoccupied
housing estates. This makes
the void shown in the cover picture
unusual. Because as soon as you turn
the first page of the book, the view is
foreshortened. Buildings crowd the
space.
Faced with these vestiges of
wealth, Valérie Anex turns her camera
towards the walls, the hedges,
the fences and the advertising signs.
She takes stock of the estates, paying
close attention to the architecture
and its direct links with land development
policies. The composition of and
repetition in the photographs, as well
as the sequence of the images and
their interaction with the text, make
Ghost Estates a book that documents
the process by which new houses
become empty husks, left behind
like debris. The book thus evokes the
dynamic that leads from consumer fetishism
to the collapse of an economic
system.
The book’s closing image depicts
the ghosts of futures imagined.
Here, the avatars of the men and woman
depicted on the advertising sign
remind us of the origins of the ghost
estates. Whilst in the past, a ghost town
was one which had been abandoned,
the ghost towns of today have never
been inhabited. The photographs in
Ghost Estates cannot make this “new
spectre that is haunting the world”
visible to the eye. However, they make
reference to this compressed passage
of time, allowing the reader to reflect
on the habitable world.
the editors
Valérie Anex
Les éditions d’Uqbar, 2013
84 pages, 48 photographies
25.5 x 19.6 cm, hardcover
30 EUR / commande@uqbar.ch
ISBN 978-2-8399-1169-6
www.uqbar.ch
Beyond the freshly tarmaced
road lies only a wasteland. The Ghost
Estates cover photography shows that
the project envisaged for this plot of
land has not come to fruition. It seems
that this space should have been occupied
by a detached home, completing
the cul-de-sac. When the “housing
bubble” burst in 2008, activity on building
sites suddenly stopped. At this
stage, the Irish landscape was already
covered by over three thousand unoccupied
housing estates. This makes
the void shown in the cover picture
unusual. Because as soon as you turn
the first page of the book, the view is
foreshortened. Buildings crowd the
space.
Faced with these vestiges of
wealth, Valérie Anex turns her camera
towards the walls, the hedges,
the fences and the advertising signs.
She takes stock of the estates, paying
close attention to the architecture
and its direct links with land development
policies. The composition of and
repetition in the photographs, as well
as the sequence of the images and
their interaction with the text, make
Ghost Estates a book that documents
the process by which new houses
become empty husks, left behind
like debris. The book thus evokes the
dynamic that leads from consumer fetishism
to the collapse of an economic
system.
The book’s closing image depicts
the ghosts of futures imagined.
Here, the avatars of the men and woman
depicted on the advertising sign
remind us of the origins of the ghost
estates. Whilst in the past, a ghost town
was one which had been abandoned,
the ghost towns of today have never
been inhabited. The photographs in
Ghost Estates cannot make this “new
spectre that is haunting the world”
visible to the eye. However, they make
reference to this compressed passage
of time, allowing the reader to reflect
on the habitable world.
the editors
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