Timothy Allen在多年以来拍摄了很多的废弃建筑物，这些废弃建筑对Timothy Allen拥有巨大的吸引力，他们沉默的残垣断壁为性格内向的摄影师提供了无限想象空间，他仿佛回到孩童时代，在现实中进行时光旅行。

很多著名的建筑被保护起来，用作旅游业进行盈利。让Timothy Allen感到讽刺的是，这实际上是这些建筑的一种尴尬死亡状态，虽然看上去是那么的优雅，反而那些被遗弃的建筑倒像是活物。

Timothy Allen强烈的坚持自己的观点，访问了一些被遗忘的让人叹为观止的宏伟建筑，他们面对自然消融的历程让人震撼。

摄影师在2011年夏天到保加利亚参加一个摄影节时，一名当地摄影师给他看了保加利亚Buzludzha纪念碑的照片。Buzludzha纪念碑坐落在雄伟的山脉之上，像是一个邪恶博士藏身的飞碟。

摄影师知道，自己必须前往那里，于是，在6个月后的冬季，保加利亚气候最恶劣的时候，驱车250公里，前往到这个巴尔干索菲亚山脉边缘的宏伟建筑。当时暴风雪恣虐，摄影师顶着恶劣的天气仍去邂逅这座建筑，随后的四天，依然风雪交加，到了第五天，终于云开日出。这套让人有时空穿越之感的作品的拍摄历程可谓历尽千辛万苦。

Over the years I’ve visited my fair share of abandoned buildings. They’ve always held a very strong attraction for me. Somehow, their silent decaying facades offer the perfect blank canvas for an introverted imagination like mine… literally allowing me to conjure up vivid images of the past in my present. Unfortunately, I fear that this may be the best opportunity I have to experience the reality of time travel in my life time, something that I’ve fantasised about incessantly since I was a small child.

It has to be said, that when I was younger there were a hell of a lot more interesting derelict buildings around. These days, in my country at least, it’s very unfashionable to let a significant building die gracefully. Aside from the money-making implications, we tend to feel that we are somehow disrespecting our heritage by allowing them to decay, and so, often we attempt to stop the march of time by tidying them up and imprisoning them behind a red rope, preserving them in a most awkward state of disrepair for future generations to line up and look at from a viewing platform. The ironic thing is that abandoned buildings feel alive to me. They are involved in a beautiful natural process that the act of preservation will, by its nature, halt and kill.

Of course my opinion is an unfairly idealised and overly romantic one. The argument for preserving old buildings is a very strong one that I wholeheartedly support myself. However. On the rare occasions that I get to visit a forgotten building as magnificent as this one, I can’t help day dreaming about some of the incredible monumental relics I know back home and quietly wishing that a few more of them had been left to grow old and perish naturally rather than being unceremoniously hooked up to the proverbial life support machine of modern tourism as is so often the case these days.

I first heard about the Buzludzha monument (pronounced Buz’ol’ja) last summer when I was attending a photo festival in Bulgaria. Alongside me judging a photography competition was Alexander Ivanov, a Bulgarian photographer who had gained national notoriety after spending the last 10 years shooting ‘Bulgaria from the Air’. Back then he showed me some pictures of what looked to me like a cross between a flying saucer and Doctor Evil’s hideout perched atop a glorious mountain range.

I knew instantly that I had to go there and see it for myself.

Sure enough, 6 months later amidst the worst winter weather the country had experienced for many years, I was back in Bulgaria, and with the help of my friend Kaloyan Petrov we drove the 250km from Sofia to the edge of the Balkan Mountain range in which this magnificent building is located……(

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