Post-Apocalyptic Fashion

This post-apocalyptic series is by the famous fashion photographer Steven Meisel and was published by Vogue Italia in September 2004.


The abandoned morbid scenery refers to a lot of post apocalyptic and zombie films, like for example "Resident Evil: Extinction" (2007) with Milla Jovovich. Jessica Stam the model poses like a dead victim or already as a zombie. I like Meisel because his dark humor.

Construction of Virtual Ruins

Visiting blogs of my followers, what I routinely do because many have similar interests, I discovered the beautiful project of James Garner. He made a 3D animation about the alien ruins in H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Mountains of Madness. I don’t understand much of animations, but always thought it must be a great lot of work.

Therefore I found it interesting that someone describes it in detail illustrated with a lot of images. Garner starts with some raw sketches and ends up with a convincing video clip.



It’s also interesting to read where he took his inspirations from, how he built up his own vision of ruins to construct these virtual ones

Heavy Metal Ruins

In search of the iconographic roots of ruin illustrations I passed through a lot of editions of Heavy Metal Magazine – started in 1977. Soon I noticed that in the first years not much is to be found. But then in the 1990s ruins started to become fashionable.

Today a combination well armed half naked warrior women with ruins seems to be the climax of comic art.

Cover of a 2003 edition by Luis Royo

Cover of a 2004 edition by Jim Burns

Ruinenberg Potsdam

Near Berlin lies the city of Potsdam the old residence of the former Prussian kings. Far enough from the noisy Berlin Frederick the Great constructed here his palace Sanssouci which is still the main tourist attraction.

To provide the fountains of the gardens with water a great tank was built in 1748 on a hill in front of the palace. So that the great king was not annoyed with the view of a banal tank the hill was decorated with a greek/roman folly ruin. Later in the 19th century when the taste had changed more to medieval ruins a Norman castle was added.

Greek/Roman temple


Norman castle with the tank in front

Deathlands Ruins

In the 1980s Gold Eagle Books started a series of post-apocalyptic novels which were written by various authors but published under the artificial name of James Axler. After a nuclear winter the United States came to be known as the Deathlands, where everybody has to fight for his freedom and his survival.


But above all I like the covers of the books which are normally showing a similar mixture of mutated beasts, survival gear and post-apocalyptic ruins. The ruins are here the symbol of a lost civilization that has returned to wild primitive levels.

Böcklin's Tomb

This painting by the German artist Ferdinand Keller (1842-1922) refers to the Swiss Symbolist painter Arnold Böcklin and his most famous painting "Isle of the Dead".

Böcklin's Tomb is no ruin, but it’s already covered by plants and well integrated into nature. Ashes to ashes…