The evening sun glides through the open doors of the abandoned villa like liquid gold. Its rays touch the iron staircase gate, once proudly forged by an Italian artisan, and make it glow for a moment as if it remembers one more time what it was like to be admired.
The staircase leads up, like a forgotten thought, to rooms where the dust has settled like a blanket of silence. On the walls, shadows dance across hand-painted frescoes - flowers slowly dissolving in the dusk. Each brushstroke tells a story of opulence, of evenings filled with music and laughter that now seems to whisper only in the walls.
The smell of damp and old paint hangs heavy in the air, but somewhere, between the cracks and the silence, something soft still lives: an echo of what once was. Here, in this stairwell where time has stood still, it seems as if the past has not disappeared, but is just resting for a while.
And as the sun slowly sinks behind the hills, the house continues to breathe - slow, melancholic, but full of dignity. As if it knows: beauty does not perish. It hides, waiting for someone to dare look up again.
                                
My name is John Noppen. During my tour through different countries I take unique photographs of beautiful deserted places and buildings, capturing the decay and atmosphere is my ultimate goal. The possibility to take a look behind closed doors and the excitement that this branch of photography brings with.. Read more…