For the past half century, 190 Bowery has been a legend. The six-storey, 72-room former bank building on the fringes of SoHo looked like a war zone on the outside, crumbling and covered in graffiti. And the inside, the home of a photographer with insane real estate luck — well…
Chernobyl’s desolation is ruin porn’s hallowed ground. But photographer Darmon Richter says the image of an abandoned Soviet city, untouched since its nuclear disaster, is a carefully constructed facade, a powerful and profitable myth perpetuated by the moneymakers of dark tourism.