I realized from a young age that decay was in fact very beautiful.  I would go with my father on grey winter weekends up and down the banks of the Hudson River to the rambling estates that dotted the region. These huge houses, perched above the frozen river like great tattered birds would be in various states of ruin, from peeling paint to full collapse, the toll of time was so Evident in their façades.

 

I would hear the stories about how they once housed extremely powerful and rather bitter people, with an appreciation for romance and the golden light of the Hudson Highlands, they would escape from their busy city lives into the country. It’s in these sprawling homes New York’s elite would entertain in the great big rooms of their homes. But as time rolled on and the money ran out,  these homes were left to fall apart in the hands of eccentric heirs, who would live out the remaining years of their lives in the memory of what once was.  These once wealthy,  and once young heirs, would live like paupers in the isolation of their crumbling ancestral homes. I found this so incredibly dreary, but at the same time fantastical,  I would wander off into the overgrown gardens, dark corners, and long hallways searching for the signs of past life, and imagining what things must have looked like originally. I would wait for a ghost to take my hand and show me the secrets in the walls, but their faces just would glare down from the oil paintings, their lips remaining sealed. 

 

These melancholy afternoons were like traveling into a Dutch Vanitas,  the beauty and opulence of life, slowly decaying away, reminding me that time conquers all mortals. Like the wrinkles in an old person's face, each loose stone and rotted beam had a silent story to tell, watching the inhabitants come and go through the years.

 

Photographs 1-8 are photographed by Colin Deleo.