After The Last Use

A late–nineteenth-century brick industrial building stands silent in winter, its tall arched openings sealed and darkened against the snow. Once designed for movement - goods, people, light - each doorway and window is now closed, their original purpose erased but their form carefully preserved. The decorative brickwork above the arches remains intact, quietly contradicting the building’s present state of disuse.

The composition emphasizes repetition and perspective. The camera aligns tightly with the corner of the structure, allowing the façade to recede rhythmically into the distance while the near wall anchors the frame with weight and texture. Snow gathers along the sills and thresholds, marking the boundary between interior absence and exterior cold. In black and white, the image becomes an exploration of pattern and restraint - brick against brick, void against mass, free of distraction.

Buildings like this were common across Michigan’s industrial towns in the late 1800s and early 1900s, constructed to serve rail-adjacent commerce, manufacturing, or storage. When their function ended, many were sealed rather than demolished, left as fixed artifacts within a changing landscape. This photograph does not mourn the loss of use so much as it records the act of closure itself; a deliberate pause in the life of a structure once built for constant activity.