Beautiful photos of bankrupt offices

Photographer Phillip Toledano's shoots of bankrupt offices were meant to be archaeological exercises, but the signs of life interrupted make them as ghostly as the frozen statues of Pompeii. Link (via Neatorama)

[#1 posted by Tenn , May 24, 2008 8:07 PM]

Why is it so 'life interrupted?' Bankrupt businessmen don't bother to clean up their mess?

Creepy pictures though.

[#2 posted by ROSSINDETROIT , May 24, 2008 8:16 PM]

Take a look at the rest of his photo sets. I like a lot of what I see there.

[#3 posted by noen , May 24, 2008 8:19 PM]

The upside is that he'll have plenty more material in the coming collapse of civilization. ;)

[#4 posted by Clayton Hove , May 24, 2008 8:27 PM]

The photo with the mostly-empty microcubes and motivational poster... Love it. Love it. Love it.

Serves them right for implementing Trust Fall Tuesdays.

[#5 posted by Antinous , May 24, 2008 8:39 PM]

I liked The Grotto of the Ceiling Pencils and The Villa of the Office Chairs.

[#6 posted by fleshtone , May 24, 2008 9:39 PM]

good pics, but i'd like to register a complaint with the bureau of crappy flash galleries.

[#7 posted by Anonymous , May 24, 2008 10:12 PM]

The Bureau of Crappy Flash Galleries would like to inform you that this gallery is not made with Flash. It's just bad UI design.

[#8 posted by marceau_marceau , May 24, 2008 10:45 PM]

Our whole company is outfitted with abandoned dot-com furniture and equipment. Our office manager was a genius at locating these (usually by word of mouth) and we'd spend all night loading racks, shelving, and really expensive office furniture into a U-Haul. Every morning I read my email while sitting in an $800 leather executive office chair. Thanks, MyLackey.com!

[#9 posted by WarLord , May 24, 2008 11:08 PM]

Greetings

Check out "Cube Life" - another photo set

Interesting vision

oh yeah and wallpaper...

Enjoy the journey

Warlord

[#10 posted by mhlaxp , May 24, 2008 11:52 PM]

Reminds me of a set that I got from a Scottish friend. They're pictures from an abandoned textile factory, some really great shots in there. Impressed me so much I had to make a torrent out of them.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/1361420

Released under Creative Commons for those interested.

[#11 posted by slywy , May 25, 2008 4:00 AM]

Maybe it's me, but I don't think they're very good. It doesn't look like "life interrupted," which would imply it looked just like it did when the people were there, as Pompeii did, just decayed a bit. The only things like that were the posters and such. It looks more like life junked.

[#12 posted by strider_mt2k , May 25, 2008 5:03 AM]

Lets we forget...

Indeed.

[#13 posted by strider_mt2k , May 25, 2008 5:03 AM]

Darnit, blew the line.

"lest"

Sorry everyone.

[#14 posted by JSG , May 25, 2008 5:43 AM]

A few of them look staged, the bent plastic cup, the sock on the floor, the books in the middle of the floor. Others looked real though, the rotting plants, the server room, and the last, "Lest we forget" photo. All in all, whether staged or not, it is a very good photo essay of small business failures.

[#15 posted by jipijapa , May 25, 2008 8:40 AM]

Look at a background file box in the last photo. On it are the words "BAD BAD BAD"

[#16 posted by Maneki Nico , May 25, 2008 9:16 AM]

Yay photos!

Boo mystery meat navigation. :(

[#17 posted by pneff , May 25, 2008 12:46 PM]

Any abandoned place where once busy people no longer gather depresses me; an old military base, a closed highway, a graveyard for outdated aircraft, sad. I think of all the energy, enthusiasm, intelligence and life that once was there. Where did it go? Will places I now frequent become so empty? It's worse than a funeral.

[#18 posted by moebrook , May 25, 2008 4:17 PM]

I worked for a office furniture installation company for seven years of so. These pictures look like a typical monday morning, I got tons of pens and such for my teacher wife. You just have to be carefull of boogers wiped under worksurfaces and drawers full of old shoes.

[#19 posted by Valacosa , May 25, 2008 7:41 PM]

Maybe these places went out of business because they were too disorganized. 5S, people.

[#20 posted by mrfitz , May 26, 2008 12:00 AM]

I'd say businesses have an advantage over people--when a business goes bankrupt it just dies--when a person goes bankrupt it stays with him for seven years.

[#21 posted by bjacques , May 26, 2008 4:38 AM]

Reminds me of the school near Chernobyl.

[#22 posted by Haesae , May 26, 2008 10:18 AM]

Mmm. I wonder how many of these offices are tied to the popped housing bubble. And I want to see a series of the houses that were then disrupted/abandoned because of those offices, not just the offices. . .

[#23 posted by Halloween Jack , May 26, 2008 12:26 PM]

How about instead of "life interrupted", it's more like "after they let all of the prisoners free"?

[#24 posted by Antiglobalism , May 26, 2008 2:45 PM]

Bankrupted offices are awesome. They might inspire people to do something more meaningful with their lives than shuffling paper to some capitalist elite.