The above photos by photographer Michael John Grist (website) during his haikyo trip to Nara Dreamland, an abandoned amusement park in Japan. Haikyo (Japanese for “ruins”) is the hobby of urban exploration, which often includes trips to abandoned places and nearly always includes people photographing their experiences.

I was particularly drawn to these images because they were at once formally beautiful, but also emotionally evocative. They are haunting images of a constructed reality that was enjoyed, then abandoned. I saw these awhile back, but I was recently reminded of them when I was trying to think of other artists that work in capturing constructed realities.