I was reading a language I already knew.
Brett Patman is the photographer behind Lost Collective — a decade-long archive of abandoned places in Australia and Japan, made by someone who used to work inside them.
- Based
- Sydney, AU
- Working since
- 2015
- Series
- 63 active
- Prints
- 1,800+
- Editions
- 100 / 50 / 25
Fifteen years inside the buildings, before any of them were photographs.
I spent 15 years as a fitter and turner working inside power stations, factories, and industrial facilities. I knew these buildings from the inside — how they functioned, what they felt like when they were running.
When I started photographing the abandoned versions of the same places, I wasn't documenting decay. I was reading a language I already knew.
The first location I photographed was White Bay Power Station, a decommissioned coal plant on the edge of Sydney Harbour, closed for 30 years, still largely intact. Capture Magazine ran the photographs shortly after. That piece became Lost Collective.
Brett Patman may well be the luckiest person in Sydney. With a $2 billion transformation in the works, the historical value of this series is only set to grow.Capture Magazine — review of the White Bay series
Hospitals, hotels, farmsteads, cement works, and Japan's haikyo.
Over the past decade, the archive has expanded to include hospitals, hotels, farmsteads, cement works, and Japan's haikyo — the abandoned resort towns and onsen hotels left behind when the bubble economy collapsed in the 1990s.
The buildings are not ruins. Most are structurally intact. What they've lost is purpose, and with it, the people who gave them meaning. That gap between what a place was and what it is now is where the photographs live.
- 63 Series
- 1,800+ Prints
- 2 Countries
- 10yr Archive
The unexpected part: the people who recognised the rooms.
What I didn't expect was the community. Former workers who recognised their old workplaces. Families who had lived in the houses. Nurses who trained in the hospitals. People reached out to say: I was there. I remember that room. My father worked that floor for 30 years.
The photographs became a way for people to reconnect with places they thought were already gone — not because the buildings had been demolished, but because access had closed and the world had moved on.
I remember that room.
My father worked that
floor for 30 years.
Heritage recognition, and a press history that has stuck.
Lost Collective received a Highly Commended in the Multimedia category at the 2016 National Trust Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards — recognised alongside organisations dedicated to preserving Australia's built and cultural heritage.
Featured in
The scene is bleak and haunting for photographer Brett Patman, whose new project aims to capture historical abandoned buildings before they're gone.
Lost Collective: Photographing the Ghosts of Sydney's Industrial Past.
Museum-grade. Hand-signed. Once an edition closes, it stays closed.
Every print is produced from the original RAW file on museum-grade materials and signed by hand. Limited editions from 100 down to 25. Once an edition sells out, it is never reproduced.
- Process
- Archival pigment print, ICC-profiled
- Paper
- Smooth Cotton Rag · 310gsm
- Editions
- 100 / 50 / 25 (by size)
- Signed
- By hand, recto, with edition number
- Certificate
- Issued with every print
- Once closed
- Never reproduced
Sydney, NSW · Australia
For prints, commissions, and the occasional building tip-off.
Lost Collective ships worldwide from Sydney. New work is added to the archive several times a year; the mailing list is the first place it appears.
- Direct
- brett@lostcollective.com
- Studio
- Sydney, NSW · Australia
- Elsewhere
- @lostcollective · Instagram
- Press & commissions
- brett@lostcollective.com