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

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Guardian story / interview about the Ukraine car cemetery photo mural

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Irpin Ukraine: Please Don’t Forget Us

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A 60-foot-long photograph of a civilian car cemetery in Ukraine

I recently visited Ukraine and I would love you to see the installation of one of several works I will be making from my visit. Please come on this Saturday to see the 60-foot-long photograph of the car cemetery in Irpin, full of the bullet and shrapnel-ridden cars destroyed as residences fled the city.

This is the first of two public art installations I’ve planned. The second will be a large walk-in cyclorama of a bombed apartment block in Borodyanka.

On March 6th 2022, Russians shelled the road that hundreds of civilians were using to escape the fighting in Irpin. Men, women and children were killed while fleeing in an attack that was called a likely war crime by the Human Rights Watch. Parts of the city were occupied by Russian forces until they were forced out at the end of that March. They left behind over 250 civilians dead, a quarter of the 62,000 residents homeless, and 70% of infrastructure damaged. 

This is a vulnerable moment for Ukraine, with the stopgap spending bill set to expire on November 17th, and support for aid waning among Republicans in Congress.

This installation is up-close and visceral. It serves a witness to just some of the horror and destruction Ukraine has experienced, a memorial in life-sized detail.  It was stitched together from over 30 high-resolution images and can be viewed in high resolution at: pwbuehler.prodibi.com/a/jvlqx2okwlexyzv

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“Wall of Liars and Deniers” in the Guardian

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The more than 300 Republican politicians, right-wing pundits and others like Rudy Guiliani and Mike “My Pillow” Lindell who spread the “Big Lie” that Trump won the 2020 Presidential election.

You can see it at 12 Grattan Street, Bushwick Brooklyn, next to Pine Box Rock Shop.

Story here.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/08/the-wall-of-liars-and-deniers-trump-fake-election-rhetoric

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