Urban Exploration Photography: Discover Hidden Gems

Abandoned Places | Right, I have a marked preference for old and abandoned buildings. The remarkable charm, the historical atmosphere, the silence and the explorer-feeling are indescribable, for what reason you need to take photos to catch the power of the moment! Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, both born in Parisian suburbs, photograph for several years abandoned places around the world. Their most famous photographs are those showing “The Ruins of Detroit”, which were already shown in different galleries in Paris, Stockholm and Strasbourg. ...

Urban Exploring | The catacombs under Paris are definitely worth a visit: Deep dark tunnels, skulls and Bones, legal and illegal clubs, graffiti, mural artworks and fire-breather - The Parisian underground is a living theme and exploring park for people (the so-called cataphiles) who want to dip into another, sometimes surreal world… Not long ago, the renowned National Geographic published a nice photo gallery of the catacombs and wrote: Paris has a deeper and stranger connection to its underground than almost any city, and that underground is one of the richest. The arteries and intestines of Paris, the hundreds of miles of tunnels that make up some of the oldest and densest subway and sewer networks in the world, are just the start of it. Under Paris there are spaces of all kinds: canals and reservoirs, crypts and bank vaults, wine cellars transformed into nightclubs and galleries. Most surprising of all are the carrières—the old limestone quarries that fan out in a deep and intricate web under many neighborhoods, mostly in the southern part of the metropolis. (Neil Shea, National Geographic) ...

Urban Exploration Book | Every time I visit old, abandoned factories and warehouses a cold shiver runs down my back. It’s that great to explore those decayed buildings, to find about 20 years old jackets and trouser, to inspect crazy cupboards and machines. Yes, I really love abandoned retreats especially when they’re in a highly populated area. In my opinion you can find some real beauty in decay! That’s why I want to inform you about this new incredible photographic book by one of the greatest urbex photography protagonists, London-based photographer Romany WG - Its name: Beauty in Decay! ...

Abandoned Places | This list of creepy, beautiful and spectacular modern ruins I recently found is really amazing! It includes probably the top 10 abandoned places worldwide and may I should start travelling to one of them every year… Since the world we live in has been largely mapped and plotted, we urban adventurers turn our sights toward the relics of old and the ruins of the recent past. If you find beauty in urban decay, in the crumbling and abandoned places of yesteryear, you’ll want to read on. (thecoolist.com) ...

As you know, I’m currently in London and therefore still on the search for some great impressions of that interesting city, I could show you to complete something like an unusual city portrait of London… Today I found round about 1400 scanned diapositive-photos in doveson2008’s “London, England 1940s to 1980” photo-collection on Flickr, which is a massive historically photo-portrait of the UK’s capital! These are mostly undated red-bordered Kodachrome slides (although some have handwritten dates on which are given when present). I’ve always found these to be very colour faithful, despite the odd cyan shadow here and there. They are my favourite type of any slide, with the best having a richness of detail and quality that’s unbeatable, even despite some darkening over fifty-odd years on some of them. (doveson2008) ...

Since I’m in London, some interesting things happened in Berlin. I will give you a short overview in the next Urban Art Eye Candy post, which should be ready in the next days. But today I show you the new abandoned tape artworks, my friend Buffdiss recently did in some old factories and warehouses… Australian tape artist Buffdiss is well-known around the globe for his fantastic tape installations, showing hands, ornaments, letters or other line-based stuff, whereas some of his latest artworks combine tape and paint and create in this way some new effects! And although it seems the new works are still experimental, I hope to see more of that stuff soon! ...

As a faithful reader, you may noticed that the Australian tape artist BUFFdiss is in Berlin for a few month and that I was several times on the run with him… Yesterday, I met up with him and the famous French graffiti artist Nelio (Those of you, who already visited Lyon should know him!) to explore an abandoned warehouse in the south of Berlin. It was a great day - we had a lot of fun and took nice photos of rough walls and nice new artworks! Here are some of the shots I took… ...

It’s the third time, that I have PictureReport in the program. The first time I wrote about the filmmakers crew was last winter, when they published that beautiful urban winter atmosphere video. And then, four weeks ago I wrote about the first two parts of their abandoned places series. This time, I write because they filmed another known abandoned place in Berlin: The NSA station Teufelsberg Berlin, which is empty since Americans and Britons left the listening station in 1991. The entire area is abandoned since 2000. ...