In the age of Google Earth, Sanzhi, Taiwan has become best known for a project that was never completed: On the shore of this sleepy township is an abandoned 1980s resort referred to as “Sanzhi pod village.” Via satellite, the pods appear as bundles of cheerful candy pastilles, pink and blue apartments stacked on top of each other. In person — and as captured by photographer Magda Biernat in Continental Bounce, on show through March 2 at Soho’s Clic Gallery — you can see paint peeling from the pods, the broken floor-to-ceiling windows gawping over a planned swimming pool that now resembles a swamp. After years of neglect and coastal weather, the complex conveys something like a post-apocalyptic tourist resort from the latest sci-fi flick.

Including Sanzhi, Biernat visited 17 places over the course of a year, taking photos of ghost town buildings in New Zealand, a solo yurt in Mongolia, and pink tipi-style houses in Namibia.

“It was supposed to be my 30th birthday present; I wanted to go around the world,” says Biernat, who is originally from Poland and now lives in New York. She and her husband based where they wanted to travel on places where they hadn’t yet been.

“All we knew were countries [we wanted to go to]. Then inside, basically we were doing a lot of couch-surfing,” Biernat says. “We stayed with local people, and they told us about these places.”

In Taiwan, Biernat and her husband stumbled upon another future-themed village an hour from Sanzhi; several photos of “Green Bay Resort” also made it into Continental Bounce. For the couple’s travels in Kenya, an acquaintance in the U.S. suggested they stay with his family in a Masai village.

One critic described the colors in Biernat’s photographs as “ripe,” and looking for where these vegetal and flower-bright tones appear in similar combinations, in very different parts of the world, is a satisfying game. And the shapes, too: photographs of two gas stations, in Coober Pedy, Australia and the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, are presented side-by-side like long-lost twins.

An architectural photographer whose work has appeared in magazines such as Metropolis and ELLE Decor, Biernat focused on living spaces without their inhabitants for the bulk of this exhibition, which is her first solo show in New York. A grid of smaller photos — each one slightly bigger than a square of chocolate — feature some of the Chinese guards and Masai warriors she encountered.

“I never considered myself a ‘people photographer,’ but during the trip, we met so many amazing people, it was hard not to take their photographs,” says Biernat. She adds, “The end picture, it seems, the people themselves are like structures.”

Biernat is now working on a more localized project. As part of her MFA at Transart Institute, through Donau-Universität Krems in Austria, she is documenting how people’s apartments illustrate their cultural identities in her adopted hometown, post-recession New York.

Continental Bounce
Magda Biernat
On exhibition through March 2
Clic Gallery
424 Broome Street
New York, NY 10013
Daily 11 am – 7 pm