Exhibition explores abandoned worlds (From Oxford Mail)

Exhibition explores abandoned worlds

5:30pm Wednesday 11th April 2012 in News By Rhianne Pope

EERIE images of abandoned buildings and industrial estates left to decay are in the frame at a new Oxford exhibition.

Echoes For Company opens at the Jam Factory in Hollybush Row next month and will run until the end of June.

Photographer Darren Nisbett, a former pupil at Cooper School in Bicester, said: “It’s a bit of a morbid fascination really.

“The exhibition is a collection of photographs which are of abandoned objects and spaces.

“Many of them are places where people worked or buildings of historical importance, but now they have just been left to the elements.”

Mr Nisbett, who lived in Bicester for more than 10 years, started photography five years ago.

He juggles his hobby with a career in e-commerce.

The pictures, which are layered onto spray-painted and distressed aluminium panels, were photographed around the world. Locations include Chernobyl, Detroit, California, Belgium and Poland.

Mr Nisbett, 36, said: “I quite like when I’m planning a trip or holiday to make sure we find somewhere unusual and off the beaten track.

“In Detroit we saw the effects of what happened when the auto industry collapsed and people left the city.”

Mr Nisbett’s previous exhibition, Chernobyl’s Zone of Alienation, won critical acclaim from The Sunday Times and The Independent.

It documented the landscape in infra-red on the 25th anniversary of the nuclear disaster.

He said: “Chernobyl was amazing. When the accident happened everyone was evacuated, so it’s a whole place left completely as it was.

“It was like walking round a post-apocalyptic disaster movie set.”

Mr Nisbett added: “I like to find the stuff society doesn’t want you to see.

“I like to get under the skin of a place and find out what’s really there.”

• Echoes for Company opens at the Jam Factory on May 28 and runs until June 24.

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