Finding Beauty in Abandoned Buildings

In a manner of speaking, an abandoned building reawakened the photographer in Rachel Tine.

She’d stopped taking pictures almost a decade earlier, when her negatives and equipment were destroyed in a house fire, and as the years passed, she’d found it harder and harder to imagine picking up a camera again. But in 2012, when she encountered a little schoolhouse in Reidsville, North Carolina, Tine was struck by the beauty of its peeling paint, the loneliness of its empty chairs. She decided to shoot it — and has been hooked on abandoned buildings ever since.

In this gallery, you’ll see her photographs of abandoned asylums, resorts, libraries and that Reidsville schoolhouse. Tine, 30, shoots for a variety of outlets, including OZY, and is based in Boston.