Nature is taking back these buildings.

I photograph the ruins of urban America. Ruins are open, vulnerable, and evocative. As building fragments, they invite us to imagine how they were before their demise.

Ruins constantly change. City workers seal windows and doorways and sometimes try to cover up dereliction by painting fake windows and doors on the seals. Scavengers steal carvings, statues, metal pipes, wires, and even bricks and stones. Arsonists often destroy buildings entirely, leaving behind a vacant lot and not even a memory of what stood there before. Abandoned and derelict buildings quickly become hosts to vegetation on their roofs and in their walls. The rain and wind accelerate their descent into ruin. Often, unscrupulous contractors and businesspeople use ruins as dumps for discarded old tires and broken appliances. Ruins are potential homes for the homeless and offices for drug dealers.

In Highland Park, Mich., there used to be a ruined house painted bright orange. Clearly visible from the Davison Freeway, it surprised drivers accustomed to seeing only burned-out hulks as they drove by. * Perhaps unsettled by the attention this strange orange ruin attracted, city workers soon had it demolished.

Click here to see a slide show of urban ruins.

Correction, Feb. 24, 2010: This article originally misidentified the Davison Freeway as the Davidson Freeway. (Return to the corrected sentence.)