An abandoned airplane in the middle of nature may not be something you want to see. Typically, their journey up to the point of crash landing wasn’t a happy one. These pictures taken by German photographer Dietmar Eckell, however, are hauntingly beautiful.
There’s no denying that the subjects of his photographs have tragic pasts, but it’s amazing to see these once-functional machines at rest in nature. What happened before these airplanes fell seem like nothing more than fading memories that will one day be swallowed up by the world around them.
“Happy End” is a remarkable photo series from German photographer Dietmar Eckell.
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The planes in Eckell’s photographs all had happy endings, but that doesn’t take anything away from the terror coming with plummeting from the sky in a winged metal tube.
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The exact details behind these crash landings are a mystery we can’t help but wonder about.
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Some of the emergency landings were in such an isolated location, it’s a miracle that survivors were ever found.
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(via Dietmar Eckell)
Dietmar traveled to remote locations all over the globe to find the wreckage of these airplanes. Although we may never know what happened in each location, sometimes the haunting pictures tell enough of the story. Fear, hope and close calls fill the air around the carcasses of the planes.
For more of Dietmar Eckell’s work, check out his website. If you liked the photographs above, don’t forget to order his Happy End book.
