Kieron Connolly’s new book of photographs of more than 100 once-busy and often elegant buildings gives an idea of how the world might look if humankind disappeared. Here: Bodie, Mono County, California. Gold was discovered at Bodie in 1859 (just after the initial California gold rush) and it went from mining camp to boomtown. Its decline began in 1880, when word spread of new boomtowns elsewhere. The Standard Consolidated Mine closed in 1913, and four years later the Bodie Railway was abandoned. By 1940 the population was down to 40. Today, Bodie is maintained in a state of arrested decay as a visitor attraction. (Photo by Alamy Stock Photo)

A British Museum representative poses for photographs next to Andy Warhol's “Mao”, left, and Jim Dine's “Drag: Johnson and Mao” which feature in “The American Dream: pop to the present” exhibition during a media photocall at the British Museum in London, Monday, March 6, 2017. The exhibition, which opens to the public from March 9 and runs until June 18, charts modern and contemporary print making. (Photo by Matt Dunham/AP Photo)

A woman wearing a burka walks through a bird market as she holds her child, in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 8, 2022. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public – a sharp, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

Festival goers blow soap-bubbles at the 28th Sziget (Island) Festival on Shipyard Island, Northern Budapest, Hungary, 15 August 2022. The festival is one of the biggest cultural events of Europe offering art exhibitions, theatrical and circus performances and above all music concerts. (Photo by Marton Monus/EPA/EFE)

Models pose during the LoveShackFancy Spring/Summer 2023 Presentation at Cooper Hewitt Museum during New York Fashion Week in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., September 12, 2022. (Photo by Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Participants from an art group wearing traditional dresses rehearse Garba dance ahead of the Navratri festival in Ahmedabad on September 20, 2022. (Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP)

Icelandic horses feed on hay during a snow storm at a stud farm in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, December 14, 2022. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A person sits in a chair next to the Garzweiler lignite opencast mine at the Luetzerath village near Erkelenz, Germany, Tuesday, January 10, 2023. Environmental activists were locked in a standoff with police this week around the hamlet of Luetzerath that's due to be bulldozed for the expansion of a nearby lignite mine. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)