For 16 years, photographer Ben Marcin has navigated ticks, copperheads, hunters, and other hazards to document a quieter kind of disappearance.
As PetaPixel reported, Marcin has captured abandoned homes and temporary camps scattered across Baltimore and nearby parts of Maryland.
Here's what to know
The images from that effort are now collected in his debut photobook, The Holdouts, which turns neglected places into a visual record of isolation, memory, and change.
Across Baltimore and the surrounding region, Marcin has photographed a range of fragile dwellings from decaying row houses in the city and deserted farm homes on the Eastern Shore to homeless encampments that disappear quickly, per PetaPixel.
Though The Holdouts borrows its name from a real estate expression for an owner who will not sell a building or parcel to a developer, Marcin said he is not using the term literally here.
Instead, he told the outlet he sees these sites as places that "personify a more straightforward definition of what a holdout is, namely, the act of resisting something or refusing to accept what is offered."
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Many of the locations entered the project by chance.
"I either found them by the side of the road or stumbled upon them while hiking in the woods," he explained to PetaPixel.
To communicate their remoteness, he added to the outlet that "It was important to show as much of the surroundings as possible in order to achieve a strong sense of isolation and context."
The photographs focus on more than deteriorating buildings. They capture the relationship between shelter and landscape, showing how some places can stand still even as the world around them changes.
More background
The series extends beyond abandoned rural homes. PetaPixel noted It also includes surviving row houses in Baltimore's inner city and temporary encampments in the city that never lasted more than a year.
In some of those places, Marcin chose not to include the residents in his images, even after speaking with them.
"I frequently talked to them but I felt that the series would be more mysterious without them in it," Marcin clarified to the outlet. That decision shifts the focus to traces of human presence rather than portraiture.
Abandoned buildings often sit at the intersection of housing instability, disinvestment, and redevelopment. Even when they stand empty, they can reflect what a neighborhood has gone through and what remains.
What's being done?
By publishing The Holdouts, Marcin is preserving a visual archive of places that might otherwise vanish with little public record. Photography cannot solve vacancy or housing insecurity, but it can make those issues harder to ignore.
The project reflects the value of local documentation. Marcin told PetaPixel he gradually narrowed his focus from international travel to sites close to his Baltimore home. Rather than treating abandoned structures as curiosities, he presents them as evidence of lives, labor, and resistance.
"I have been photographing the places where people live for almost 40 years," Marcin concluded to PetaPixel. "In short, I began to understand where I live."
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