There’s an element of mystery to Brendon Burton’s photographs. The scenes of abandoned homes, rolling prairies and farmland are familiar, comfortable, but it’s clear the people left long ago. And it leaves us wondering, what happened? Burton loves that unfinished story. “It’s like a ghost portrait in a way. You’re taking a picture of someone that’s gone.”
In this provided image Brendon Burton documented an abandoned farmhouse in October, 2023 in central Oregon. Burton keeps the exact locations private. His haunting photography celebrates the American landscape.
Courtesy of Brendon Burton
On his journey to find new abandoned locations, Burton spends hours, days, traveling rural roads, often not seeing another driver for many miles. “These places are very peaceful. They’re very serene.” He’s scouted in states across the country, but most of his images are photographed right here in Oregon. The variety of landscapes — desert, forest, coast — keep him coming back home. “To me, this is a dream place to photograph,” he said, “there’s just so much to explore.”
His first book of photos, American Poetry, was released in 2020. He shows his work in galleries, publications and online. This month he releases his new book, Epitaph, a collection of work spanning the last 10 years.
Burton grew up in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, “raised on a farm that had pigs and cows and chickens. It was a very isolated logging community that was once prosperous back in the 70s and 80s.” But as logging declined, so did the town. “It’s a unique experience to live in a place that was … kind of in a downturn.” Coming of age in a town that felt “frozen in time” made an impression and set Burton on an artistic course to discover and document that scene elsewhere.
Now based in Molalla, he seeks out “areas that have a pastoral element to them… The more remote, the better.” And he likes elaborate architecture in juxtaposition with harsh, stark landscapes. “I think that might be why I’m attracted to Victorian, Edwardian grandeur. Houses that look like little dollhouses,” abandoned in the middle of a wide-open field. “It seems like something out of a dream. It seems just too good to be true.”
With nearly 60,000 followers on Instagram, Burton feels connected to a community that shares in his curiosity for these unfinished stories. “I love hearing from people, what they suspect happened,” he said. Fans tell him they’ve “been inspired to write a story about a certain house or they’re inspired to incorporate it into their music.” Burton sees it all as a “blooming of art that happens on the internet.” That connection encourages him to do more work, to drive down more distant rural roads, to discover new locations. “I don’t feel as strange and isolated and lonely to be interested in things like this when there are hundreds of other people that see it the same way.”