On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina left a trail of destruction and flood waters across New Orleans and the surrounding area, causing just short of 2,000 deaths, billions of dollars of damage and a clean up operation that continues to this day.
Six years later and many parts of New Orleans remain in disrepair, standing as reminders of a tragedy which threatened to wipe an entire area of the United States off the map. One of these such places is the Six Flags amusement park, which closed its doors in preparation of Katrina’s arrival and has remained abandoned and awaiting demolition ever since. Battered by Category 5 storm winds and submerged under water for weeks, what’s left of the Six Flags resort is a desolate and creepy mess of tangled rollercoasters and broken amusements, with laughter and fun replaced by decay and despair.
I’m fascinated by pictures of old ruined buildings left to rot over time, but these images of a once bustling theme park left in such a state are particularly haunting, and could easily pass off as the set to any post-apocolypse game or movie you might care to think of. Some of you may have seen these before, but I thought they were too interesting to ignore when I stumbled across them this afternoon.
You can find the images at Love These Pics. All credit goes to those who risked legal action (and possibly their lives, given some of the pictures) to get these snaps.
Email the author of this post at matc@tap-repeatedly.com
Cool—in a creepy sort of way, but cool nonetheless.
Like you, Mat, I too am fascinated by dereliction. Collapsing buildings, decaying industrial sites, catastrophe-shattered buildings. It’s weird, but there’s a real beauty in ruin… to me, at least. I only wish it were possible without the misery and tragedy endured by those who lived and worked there.
Those pictures are incredible, and yet in a strange way, I feel guilty looking at them – like I feel guilty looking at pictures from Chernobyl.
I know exactly what you mean Matt. It’s wierd, and yes I do feel guilty, but I just find it fascinating. It’s almost like a real life vision of post-humanity, which in itself is odd but.. pretty compelling.
I tend to find that often these pictures say just as much about the enormity of an event like Katrina as the fresh, live pictures do. Obviously rolling 24 hour news shows some pretty powerful imagery, but a site like that Six Flags – a place of laughter, happiness and fun one day, then rack and ruin the next – is just as provocative. Especially given that the site has done nothing but exist and decay exactly as it is now, exactly as it was then, for 6 years.
The only upside to these pictures is that nobody died there. The park was closed before Katrina hit. But yeah, the suggestion about tragedy elsewhere (where there was death) is still there.
Call it morbid curiosity and intrigue? Perhaps in the same way that I’m desperate to go to Poland for no reason other than to visit Auschwitz.
Wow, not only are those pix creepy as hell, but thoroughly depressing, as well. I’ve only been to that particular Six Flags park once, but just seeing it submerged and abandoned makes me sad. I remember standing in line with a friend for over an hour waiting for a thunderstorm to pass by so we could ride the Batman roller-coaster.
*sigh*
NOLA has been left to die a slow death. 🙁
What a great location for a low budget horror movie. Though I imagine the health hazards, liability issues and adverse PR possibilities would make all but impossible to shoot there. I’m surprised at how small it looks from the air.
EDIT: Never mind. It’s already been a location.
Near where mine and Greggs parents live is an old abandoned coal processing plant. We’ve always said we should take some photos of it, as it looks identical to STALKER. It’s very eerie.
Great find Mat. You are already being kept busy by your PC 😉
*Dons Photoshop snob hat.*
Great pictures but why oh why have most of them been smart sharpened to within an inch of their life? Some have got huge high contrast glows on them that just look stupid and, for me at least, they’re really distracting. It seems as if the author or editor wasn’t confident they’d stand up on their own.
I think the reason why I’ve always liked dereliction is the idea of humanity moving on and nature creeping back in. The peace and quiet in a place that was once much busier and louder. When I watched Tarkovsky’s Stalker recently that feeling was prevalent through the whole zone and incidentally the whole film.
From reading the comments it sounds like they are HDR photos with gives an artificial contrast range. What I don’t like is how the person darkened sky. It’s very clumsily done.
*Also Dons Snob Hat*
I used to be an old school custom photo printer for professional photographers back before digital was available, creating color/black and white prints up to 16 X 20 for delivery to commercial clients. I would have been fired before noon had I delivered anything that looked like these. I get they were trying for a mood but I think they went way over the top. The subject matter would have carried the mood easily. Makes me want to see some “straight” photography of the place.
One of the pictures, the blue ball one I think, looks like something from a videogame. Honestly I had a hard time distinguishing that from a game world of some sort. No idea what the hell they did with that.
Mark me down as a +1 for wishing they’d simply taken the original snaps, although I think they’re still pretty impressive in the most part.
Yeah, these are creepy as heck. If I didn’t know any better, I *would* think this was taken from a video game.
Isn’t that part of the problem with video game visuals? Sure, they need to pop more than a static image, but…. Too many tools, too abused (if I see another De Palma 80s zoom & circle I’ll say some very Bad Words).
Disasters and their aftermath are always fascinating visual objects. Tunguska. The squadron of floating coffins in the 1993 Mississippi flood. A girlfriend’s father who took photos of a half acre of angel statues that’d been vandalized. (He didn’t have the heart to tell the owner he was only interested in them broken, that they’d’ve been boring as dried snot whole.)
You would think someone would have bought it and reopened or refurbished the rides for there own park.
I think it’s a cost issue, to be honest. That was mentioned briefly in one of the picture’s comments, anyhow.
I have zero perception of how much it costs to build a Theme Park or how repairable damage like this is but.. I wouldn’t imagine much of it is salvageable.