PHILLIP BUEHLER | DOCUMENTING MODERN RUINS SINCE 1973 | SHARING ONLINE SINCE 1995

Galleries


Greystone Park Hospital, NJ

Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital was abandoned in the 1970s with the deinstitutionalization of patients. It is where Bob Dylan first met Woody Guthrie, and the topic of my book, “Woody Guthrie’s Wardy Forty: Greystone Park Hospital Revisited.” Continue reading

Greystone Park Hospital, NJ

Greystone Park – One Last Look

My final trip to Woody Guthrie’s “Wardy Forty,” just one week ahead of the wrecking ball. Continue reading

Greystone Park – One Last Look

1964/65 NY World’s Fair

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1964/65 NY World’s Fair

Titan II Missile Silo, Tucson

In the Sonoran desert outside Tucson is the remnants of a Titan II missile silo. Someone scrapped off the dirt and got down to the shell, but couldn’t get in. Continue reading

Titan II Missile Silo, Tucson

Hahn Airbase, Germany

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Hahn Airbase, Germany

Ellis Island

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Ellis Island

Fort Slocum, Davids Island, NY

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Fort Slocum, Davids Island, NY

Cape Canaveral

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Cape Canaveral

Airplane Graveyard

Outside Tuscon, Arizona in the Sonora Desert is AMARC, the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center. Here the U.S. Air Force mothballs planes until they either need them again or it’s time to salvage them for parts. Whenever the U.S. sells surplus planes to foreign governments part of the sales pitch is that there will always have a ready supply of spare parts. Some are turned into pilotless drones and used for missile target practice.

There are about 4,000 planes in storage, most now from the Vietnam era. I only wish I’d been able to go in the 60’s when there were still planes from World War II there. You can also see the photographs I shot of AMARC in 1999.

I’ve been collecting the stories people have sent. Here are a few:

“Every pilot I have ever talked to wants to visit but never does. It’s kind of like an elephant graveyard, mysterious, exciting, a place where all kids dreams go. I think that’s why not many of the pilots I’ve talked to have ever really tried to visit. I saw a documentary on the aircraft graveyard. They showed a part where they cut up the B-52’s, all my pilot buddies were silent, I think if each of them were alone, they would have been crying.”

“It shows the incredible creativity as well as the incredible destruction man is capable of.”

When you’re finished looking at these photos you can find out about tours of the boneyard given by the Pima Air Museum at the official AMARC homepage.

Continue reading

Airplane Graveyard

AMC Headquarters, Detroit

The abandoned AMC headquarters. AMC began as the Kelvinator Refrigerator Company, and this was their factory. After they merged with Nash Motors and then Hudson Motors, the company was renamed American Motors. Continue reading

AMC Headquarters, Detroit

Red Hook Grain Elevator

Built in 1922 and abandoned in 1965, it is a massive structure with 54 silos and sits across from the Ikea store in Red Hook. Continue reading

Red Hook Grain Elevator

Havana 2020

I’ve made a lot of then/now composite photos – this is my first set of now/then composites.
A series of gifs that imagine how Havana will change after Castro dies…
Continue reading

Havana 2020

Blog


Front Page of the NY TImes! Our film “Ellis Island” was published after 50 years.

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This makes me feel old in a good way! 50 years later our 16mm film was just published by NY Time as part of their new “Encore” series on Op-Docs.

Steven Siegel and I made it when we were 17 year old high school students. What an adventure to row a small boat to the then-abandoned island and explore. We were members of the Young Filmmakers Foundation’s Film Club located on the Lower East Side, around the corner from where the New Museum is now located. A much different neighborhood then!

That same rowboat is now part of the exhibit of my photos of the islands of New York at Front Room Gallery in Hudson New York that will run through June 23rd.

Watch the film on the NY Times website with this free link.

Information on the show at Front Room Gallery here.

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PBS State of the Arts “Return to Ellis Island”

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The PBS series “State of the Arts” produced a segment about Steve Siegel and my adventure rowing a small boat out to Ellis Island in 1974 to make a 16mm documentary film. We were 17 and still in high school when we made the film, and we returned in April, 50 years later, to reminisce.

View the State of the Arts program here.
View the original film on the NY Times Op-Docs website here.

Steve and my thanks to the producer of State of the Arts, Susan Wallner.

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Hyperallergic Review: “The Forgotten Islands Surrounding New York City”

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Thanks Greta Rainbow for the wonderful piece in Hyperallergic about my solo photography show at Front Room Gallery in Hudson New York. The show runs until June 23rd.

More information on the exhibition at Front Room here.
Link to the Hyperallergic piece here.

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