Baltimore's holdout homes: photographer captures the city's lone survivors

American photographer Ben Marcin has published his debut photography book, 'The Holdouts', focused on the city of Baltimore and its surrounding areas in Maryland. The book is published by Gost.

The collection features solitary terraced 'row' houses in the inner city that have somehow escaped demolition, abandoned houses on Maryland's Eastern Shore where the last generations of farming families either died or moved away, and temporary homeless camps in the city — none of which lasted more than a year.

Where the title comes from

The book's title borrows a real-estate term, 'holdout', describing a property owner who refuses to sell to a developer, thereby delaying a larger project. In some cases eminent domain is used to force the owner out; in others, the larger project is simply built around the house. Many of the houses Marcin photographed have since become abandoned, though some remain surprisingly occupied.

The former residents of these homes came from widely different backgrounds: farmers who settled the Eastern Shore, some tracing their ancestry back to the American Revolution; Black Americans who moved north during the last century's Great Migration; and present-day people experiencing homelessness and addiction who avoid city-run shelters.

Marcin recounts several specific cases, including a house dating back at least to the American Civil War, a camp near a highway belonging to a man whose site was later found levelled and burned, and another homeless camp equipped with a microwave and television that also survived less than a year.

According to Marcin, the project is not simply about abandoned buildings and encampments — it is about history, memory and marginalisation, and about which stories get preserved and which disappear.