Monday, July 20, 2009

Never Neverland


This may well be stretching everyone's patience but, seeing as how I am researching Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch for a slightly longer article, I thought I would post up a link to some fascinating photographs of it from the LA Times.

The follies and grottoes that populate the estate are now in the early stages of dereliction apparently, having never exactly been built to last. They're now appropriately merging into the picturesque tradition of ruins that the whole estate mimics, albeit in fibreglass and fake stone. All of which reminds me of this, a slightly embarrassing fictionalised account of Disneyland I wrote for a fantastically obscure German magazine a few years back.

Currently owned by LA investment company Colony Capital (who bought Jackson's loan on the property - a sort of superprime mortgage foreclosure) Neverland is slated to re-open as a shrine to the singer.

There is a good article by India Wright on the Architect's Journal website about the Architecture of Neverland which is worth reading too.

2 comments:

Blaize said...

Jonathan Haeber has a great series of urbex Neverland Ranch photos on his blog "Bearings."
http://tinyurl.com/2tzkrf

Charles Holland said...

Blaize! You're back! Thanks for that - yes amazing pictures. Been reading about Neverland and there was a great series of articles in Vanity Fair describing the layout of the place which is as interesting - albeit in a fairly unpleasant way - as the iconography and obvious surface madness.