I've always been a risk taker and an adventurer. I used to sneak out of the house at night to go to parties and hang out with friends; but what made me different from every other teenager doing the exact same thing was that I didn't do it for the parties. I did it because I loved the thrill of sneaking out. I told my friends many times that I'd rather hang out with them after curfew than beforehand. When they asked me why, I told them it was because I loved the absolute freedom that came with my parents thinking I was at home, safe and asleep. That was a lie. Many times if there wasn't anything to do one night and sneaking out wouldn't seem worth it, I'd do it anyway and wander over to the park where I'd lay on my back in the grass and look at the stars.
It got so bad that my parents had to start booby trapping the house at night. They tried everything to try and keep me safe: buckets of water, scotch tape on the door, and noisy pots and pans stacked outside my bedroom door at night. I showed up at parties drenched a few times, but I didn't really care. I refilled the buckets and put them exactly where my mother had placed them. I reset everything when I came home, or many times just found another way out. If she barricaded the door, I went out the window. If she blocked my window, I went out the bathroom window. I saw each of these traps as a new challenge and even enjoyed figuring out how to get around them.
Once, my mother tied our doorknobs together. My bedroom was directly across the hall from my parents' room. My mother closed my door, left hers open, and tied the doorknobs together with twine. If I opened my door that night, it would pull their door shut, and since their door creaked loudly every time it moved an inch, there was no doubt that even a slight tug on that string would wake my parents up.
I used my Swiss army knife as a screwdriver, took the doorknob apart, laid it on the ground and walked out of the house a free woman. When I came home several hours later, I put it all back together and my parents never knew the difference.
I was proud of these things even though I terrified my parents. I didn't understand how frightening it was for my parents to wake up, check on me and discover I had stuffed my bed full of pillows. I only understood how frightening it was for me to get a very angry call at 4:00 AM telling me to come home immediately. That was always a shock, and I even set my ringtone for my parents to Beethoven's 5th symphony so I and everyone else around me would know I was doomed the moment we heard my phone ring. My mother tried to explain to me countless times how dangerous it was for a blonde 16 year old to wander the streets late at night dressed all in pink. I didn't listen, and now consider myself lucky I wasn't mugged, raped or killed.
I eventually had to kick my habit of sneaking out. Most of my escapades took place during my sophomore year of high school, when we lived in Princeton, New Jersey for a year. The stairs in that house were newer and quieter, which made getting out the back door easy. When we moved back to our old creaky house in Carlisle, I quickly discovered that sneaking out was not a possibility. Our stairs were ancient and gave me away every single time.
A psychiatrist once wrote in my evaluation that I had an addiction to risk. My mother took this as an opportunity to tell me to stop sneaking out of the house at night and to get a dangerous job instead.
“You should just go to Baghdad and be a reporter,” she said. “That way you can really risk your life, and it won’t be for some dumb party, either.”
I realized my mother was right. My escapades were nothing more than an attempt at satisfying my craving for endangerment. After doing some research, I began immersing myself in something a little different; I began to learn the art of urban exploration. I would sneak out at night, and instead of going to parties, I would seek out abandoned buildings, beautiful old dilapidated structures, condemned heaps of gray wood resembling what used to be houses, and asbestos infested ghost towns. I came prepared. You'd be shocked to know how much equipment the average explorer owns; harnesses and ropes for climbing, cameras, flashlights, night vision goggles, gas masks, first aid kits, walkie talkies, compasses, multi tools, and extra batteries. These are just the basics that every explorer should own but not necessarily bring along on every single trip.
As I learned more about urban exploration, I became obsessed with the beauty of abandonments; they were keys to our past, shells of what society has left behind after its gaze turned toward a bitter future of austere steel skyscrapers and ugly tan warehouses squashed onto what used to be farmland. As I learned more about this so called "art", I learned the difference between a curious mind and a bored mind looking for something to occupy it with. I still get very heated when I try and explain to other people what I do and they say something along the lines of: "So do you do graffiti, too?" Vandals are a separate tribe, and urban explorers hate them with a passion, mostly because people get the two confused. More often than not, we're the ones labeled as vandals, trespassers and law-breakers. Why? Because our hobby is a silent, stealthy one; vandals leave behind spray paint splattered on brick walls, while urban explorers try to avoid even leaving footprints. Urban explorers have a code of rules; this sets us apart from people who graffiti or raid abandoned houses for valuables. We respect the places we explore and their previous inhabitants and seek only to preserve what everyone else wants to forget. The most we take is photographs, and all that we ever leave behind are footprints.
I began a photographic exploration of these buildings and discovered what I wanted to do. I wanted to become a photojournalist. Photography is merely one way of expressing a thought; an article accompanying a photograph doubles the impact of the information upon the viewer. I decided my best bet at having a career that I enjoyed was to become a photojournalist working overseas for a really liberal magazine, like The Nation. I wanted to travel to South Africa, Haiti, Darfur, Iraq, any place that had major problems going on, I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to be the one to spread any news that wasn't already available. I wanted to document the people whose lives are at the heart of issues that others were afraid to even address, let alone engage themselves in.
But right now I'm happy exploring burned down mansions, caved-in apartments and houses straight out of every horror movie you've ever seen. I love the thrill of entering these houses and exploring them thoroughly, and I think it's a passion that will stick with me until I die. My photos of these buildings serve as a testament to my determination to capture what the rest of the world seems determined to forget.
