Mexico-based photographer, Jan Smith, explores abandoned structures around the world, photographing remains of former inhabitance with ghostly bodies in their midst. The loosely defined bodies of nude men and women take form in spaces like the one pictured here--Gunkanjima Island--a former under-sea coal mine in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, which was abandoned in 1974, and also in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Namibia. The remains share remarkable similarity despite their distant geographies, suggesting a similar spirit inhabits abandoned spaces, regardless of place.

Smith writes,

Such structures exist for themselves only when they are abandoned. Without stewards, they achieve this transformation in exchange for mortality and disappearance from our memory. They live in a realm that shows itself and at the same time withdraws from us. Their acquired consciousness is like a horizon that defines itself by what we see, but also more largely by what remains veiled.

Smith's project, Ausencia y Abandono, is ongoing and you can see work from this series on his website.