The Yellow Jackets

A passionate couple who photographs forgotten places, always with their meaningful yellow jackets!

The love for what's left behind brought Ivy and Athon together, who already photographed abandoned places before they met.

With an academic background in photography and design, the duo has been working with several brands and mentored masterclasses of creative photography.

Always wearing their yellow coats, the artists portray and document the passage of time through places that are forgotten.

The interest in this concept led them to discover entire villages completely abandoned, as well as historic properties in busy urban centers.

In their portfolio there are photographs of factories, power plants and mines, prisons, palaces and shopping centers. But also cinemas and theaters, theme parks, libraries, laboratories, churches, castles, military installations and even hospitals, morgues and cemeteries...

The project "The Yellow Jackets" aims to show these places that the majority of the population doesn't have access to, calling for the preservation of the built heritage that still remains.

Initially, the couple started by wearing a yellow coat that belonged to Athon's father, who also used it to explore. They were immediately fascinated by the contrast that it created in abandoned places, typically sad, gloomy and lifeless. Yellow gave them, somehow, a new life!

The creatives quickly felt that their records were incomplete and that it would be fun to have two yellow jackets, so that both could be physically represented in the same photograph.

By "the irony of fate" they found another coat, in very poor condition. They restored it and began to wear it too.

Furthermore, yellow refers to light - the essence of photography, it is an extremely creative, warm and joyful color in itself. The authors also associate this color to overcoming difficulties, a feeling of happiness and achievement for being able to enter risky places, without knowing in advance what they are going to find.

The project they created is today more than an artistic bet, it ends up being also like a small diary, where they keep the memories of every adventure together and from each of these magical places that seem to come out of the imagination. "These places make us travel within them and within ourselves!" - They say.

To reach these buildings, the couple travels together the most difficult paths... They risk their lives every day for the peculiar passion they have in common... And they want the people who follow their work to feel the same - that they can do it too: get out of the comfort zone and go explore the world, believing in love and friendship.

This project also allows us to perceive the amount of cultural properties with a high heritage value, full of history and stories, which are abandoned and completely neglected. 

These properties are part of our own history as a community, they keep a bit of each one of us in their walls and ceilings.

While still standing...

"In ten years how many of these buildings will there be? How many will retain their original design and interiors? How many will remain to tell their memories? Most end up giving in to the passage of time, weather, economy, interests, people... Most end up collapsing, closing and burying its tales with blocks of tiles, cement and broken bricks." - tell the artists.

"The Yellow Jackets" project tries to keep these places eternal, in all the photographs they took and in the memories they create in each of them.