Abandoned North Alabama: Where the Stories Ended

Explores forgotten structures, revealing the stories of dreams, risks, and faded histories left behind.
Every factory ever built was because someone had a dream. Every business ever started was a person taking a risk. Every school ever built was done so with the intention of making a brighter future. Every church at one point was a testimony of someone's faith. Every structure someone ever called "home" was once a shelter from the often intimidating outside world. Whether that person needed shelter from the weather, shelter from the dark, or shelter from other people, those four walls provided solace. Often, dreams die, risks lead to failure, faith waivers, and people outgrow their four walls or lose them to death, poverty, or the very weather from which they are meant to provide shelter. In Abandoned North Alabama: Where the Stories Ended, photographer Robert Posey explores structures that have outlived the ambitions they were built to serve. Learn about businesses that failed even after decades of thriving. Walk through houses showing a time when racism was publicly accepted, phones were attached to walls, and children's toys, left discarded, had no place for batteries. Join along on this journey to resurrect the stories that once filled these forgotten structures before nature erases forever their tales of the past.

Robert Posey is an award-winning photographer from Arab, Alabama who spent years focusing on tourism and travel in North Alabama before turning his interests to abandoned places. He has considered himself an explorer for as long as he can remember. His childhood was spent exploring acres of deep woods, and then as a teenager, after being dared by friends to spend a night alone in a dilapidated hospital, he began developing his interest in abandoned structures. Robert's work, and that of his daughter, can be found on Instagram at thebandofam and on Tiktok at bandofam.