Abandoned

Hauntingly Beautiful Deserted Theme Parks

Seph Lawless

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781510723351
• eBook ISBN: 9781510723382
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Photography

Huffington Post called him "a master of the abandoned"—and for good reason. The "artivist" known only as Seph Lawless has spent the last ten years photo-documenting the America that was left behind in the throes of economic instability and overall decline—decrepit shopping malls, houses, factories, even amusement parks. Through nearly two hundred gorgeous and elegiac photographs, Abandoned details Lawless's journey into what was once the very heart of American entertainment: the amusement park. Lawless visits deserted parks across the country, capturing in stark detail their dilapidated state, natural overgrowth, and obvious duality of sad and playful symbolism. Previously self-published as Bizarro, this updated edition of Lawless's photographic tribute to decaying American amusement parks contains new content and a new foreword. For the first time, the famed photojournalist Seph Lawless makes his moving work available in a stunning trade edition.

SIX FLAGS AMUSEMENT PARK

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA 2003–2005

Six Flags in New Orleans, formerly known as Jazzland, unfortunately operated for only a few years before a life-changing event that sent shockwaves across a nation and devastated the landscape of New Orleans forever, a catastrophic hurricane named Katrina.

I first entered New Orleans in 2015 after being hired by the Guardian newspaper to document the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I worked alongside the original FEMA responders for that project and met many survivors of that horrific storm. I was hired to document the hardest-hit areas of New Orleans, which was the Lower Ninth Ward. I also thought documenting the abandoned Six Flags amusement park would be a dramatic way to further show the amount of devastation of the area, and it worked. My images of the abandoned park went viral and fueled the other images that I took of the Lower Ninth Ward, as it cast awareness on all that still needed to be done in New Orleans since the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city.

Perhaps at no other time in modern history has the US government been criticized so harshly at local, state, and even federal levels. The complete incompetence of the state and federal government to handle the storm before and during Hurricane Katrina reached enormous proportions, even compelling rap artis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Six Flags Amusement Park
• Disney World’s Discovery Island and River Country
• Joyland Amusement Park
• Dogpatch USA
• Fun Spot Amusement Park and Zoo
• Bushkill Amusement Park
• Land of Oz
• Lake Shawnee Amusement Park
• Geauga Lake Amusement Park
• Spreepark
• Chippewa Lake Amusement Park
• Enchanted Forest Playland
• Prehistoric Forest