Some photography projects take a weekend. This one took sixteen years. Photographer Ben Marcin has spent that stretch of time roaming Baltimore and its surrounding countryside, documenting the abandoned houses that refuse to disappear — the stubborn survivors clinging on after their neighbors have long since been demolished. The result is The Holdouts, his debut photobook, published by GOST on August 1, 2026.
The work wasn’t glamorous. Marcin’s fieldwork reads more like an adventure log than a gallery brief: dodging ticks, sidestepping copperheads, keeping clear of drug dealers, and steering around hunters wielding high-powered rifles and farmers tearing past on ATVs. All of it in service of framing the lonely, boarded-up structures that most people drive past without a second glance.
What makes these images resonate is their subject matter — architecture as portraiture. A single rowhouse standing where an entire block once was becomes a study in urban decline, resilience, and the strange dignity of things left behind. Marcin’s patience over more than a decade and a half means the collection captures not just isolated buildings but a slow-motion transformation of the American cityscape.
For collectors and design-minded readers, the book itself is a substantial object. Here are the key specifications:
- Format: 290 x 260 mm
- Pages: 144pp
- Printing: 4 colour
- Binding: Hardback, clothbound
- ISBN: 978-1-80598-038-4
The generous near-square trim gives Marcin’s frontal, meticulously composed shots room to breathe, while the clothbound hardback treatment signals that GOST intends this as a keepsake rather than a coffee-table throwaway. At 144 pages, it’s a focused edit — enough to build a narrative arc across neighborhoods and seasons without diluting the impact of individual images.
The Holdouts is priced at $65/£50/€55 and is now on sale. For anyone drawn to documentary photography, urban geography, or the quiet drama of buildings that outlast everything around them, Marcin’s long labor of persistence has produced a document that’s hard to shake off.
