When photographer Phillip Toledano (blogged previously on Neatorama here) started his project of photographing deserted offices of bankrupt companies, he found that it is "more archaeology than photography." Everywhere he went, he found signs of life, interrupted - as if a calamity had struck and the people were suddenly forced to flee.
A closed weaving mill that supported a community for over 150 years, desk drawers filled with personal posessions, walls with collages of group outings, christmas parties, weddings, babies, of people at their workplaces, tables I can see as the wind blows through the broken windows, shuffling the once-vital papers.
It's sad. Buildings full if ghosts.
I work on them, we rebuild, subdivide, people come in again, voices, laughter, relationships, a whole new cycle.
Then the stunned morning. A locked door. A notice pinned to it. Raised voices, tears.
People with pride in their work, a good product, plenty of demand, but for some reason they cannot understand, suddenly it's gone. Cancel the holiday.
The new car will have to go back...I see the faces. "What will I do?"
The old buildings, they belonged to an era where a job could be for life, where generations of families worked together, old Rose, she started in the 1930s, minding a machine, under the eye of her own grandmother, and look now, Louise, her grand-daughter, clicking through the offices on power-heels, with her laptop, and her overnight case, flying out to Zurich to complete a multi-million pound deal.
No more though. The offices are apartments now, the factory flattened, those old stones scored by iron wheels and horse's hooves, all gone.