Pablo Iglesias Maurer is an author/photographer based in Washington DC. He is best known for his work photographing abandoned places and empty dilapidated spaces, mentioning how it was a hobby since he was a kid who would often find himself walking down railroad tracks and/or exploring buildings that he claims often had a “pull” to him, a sense of curiosity.

He has captured abandoned theatres, churches he’s and shopping malls. One of his more famous work was when he did an article, documenting through his photography the deterioration and eventual demolition of on the Pontiac Silverdome stadium in Michigan, USA.

Not long ago an old matchbook laying on photographer Pablo Iglesias Maurer‘s desk caught his eye. Or rather, it was the postcard-like picture on it, of a resort complex built in the 1960s. It got Pablo wondering how the place looked now, and the answer has led him to make an amazing photo series called ‘Abandoned States‘. The picture came with the title How to Run A Successful Golf Course, but when Maurer got to the place, it was clear the owner of Penn Hills Resort didn’t follow that advice. He pointed the camera at the decaying building at roughly the same spot and did a ‘5-decades-after’ shot of the place. Ever since then, Pablo was hooked. He ordered more 60s postcards from eBay and started going around the country capturing these once beautiful buildings that now stand abandoned only as faint memories of what once was…

Using these antique photos, Maurer then hunted down the original locations and created before-and-after comparisons. Each of the abandoned places and rooms that Maurer explored had its own personal significance to Maurer, he explained, but one room in particular seemed to resonate more than the others.

Maurer enjoys exploring abandoned places. He says his method for finding forgotten structures is simply to get in his car and drive. While exploring an abandoned office at the former Penn Hills Resort, he found a matchbook with a picture of an indoor swimming pool on the cover. Exploring the resort further, he was able to find the angle at which the original photo was taken, align his camera, and capture the same image decades later, similarity to what I want to replicate to somewhat degree in my own project.

“I came up with the idea to find other ephemera from that era. I picked up postcards from eBay and area antique shops”

“The bowling alley,” he says, was an attraction in the Homowack lodge in the Catskills. “I was there on Christmas day when my family was out of town, and I had nothing to do. I went up there and bowled. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life… It felt like it had been recently lived in.”

Since publishing his work, Maurer has received emails and messages from people who say they once spent their summers in these broken-down resorts.