Introduction
Decay ignites the imagination
You’d be surprised what people leave behind, often for unknown reasons. Beautiful villas, still fully furnished – everything covered in a layer of dust. Hospitals with patient files scattered in the hallways. Theaters and ballrooms, now empty of laughter. Castles where the family photo album still sits on the bookshelf. Memories of what used to be.
How did these people live? Why is the place abandoned? What happened?
With time, nature starts to take over. As the years pass, buildings and the secrets they keep crumble and decay. On first glance you may see a pile of moldy debris, but look at it with different eyes and you’ll find a breathtaking beauty.
I am pleased to take you to the world behind the ‘no entry’ signs and the locked doors. It offers a glimpse of the beautiful, forbidden world of decay as I see it.
Daan Oude Elferink
Self-taught Dutch photographer Daan Oude Elferink (1978) travels the world to explore and capture the beauty of forbidden, decayed and abandoned places. Daan has always been drawn to adventure and even as a child you could find him often secretly playing in an abandoned factory, not knowing that years later he would be taking pictures of them. The places he visits are not open for the public and permission pretty much never is given, because the places are too dangerous. That’s why often Daan needs to go to the extreme to find a way in by climbing high walls, rooftops, crawling through tunnels, etc.
Daan’s limited edition artworks have been exhibited in art galleries and art fairs in more than 20 cities all over the world, including Miami (USA), New York (USA), Paris (France), London (UK), Stockholm (Sweden), Bangalore (India), Singapore and obviously his home country The Netherlands.
Daan has released four books: Urban Exploration & Photography (2010-2012), Gift of Time (2012-2014), Touched by Time (2014-2016) and Travel in Time (2014-2022). Touched by Time won the “European Book Price of the year 2017” awarded by the Federation of European Photographers in Sicily.