Flaws

I was instantly drawn to it. I urgently patted my friend on the arm, begging him to pull over, "just for ONE minute!" His black pick up truck rumbled to a halt and I hopped out into the weeds growing along the side of Rockledge Drive, clutching my camera.
I stood before it and stared. The exterior coat was peeled, and the planks were rough underneath my fingers. The windows were broken into perfect burst-shaped gaping holes, which faded into an interior of impenetrable blackness. All of Carlisle's weather had been absorbed into the white paint, and the raw wood underneath was grey and dry, giving the abandoned house the appearance of a black and white photograph.
In fact, when I took the picture of what would become a series of photographs depicting the beauty of abandonments, it came out black and white, even though I shot it in color. The photograph is of a window staring down at its admirer. One of its old fashioned country-style horizon shutters is flung open to the side, as if the house is opening one eye to examine you. I thought it was one of the most magnificently beautiful things I had ever laid eyes on.

There's something to be said for the beauty of an abandoned house and all its secrets and eccentricities. People are the same way; we appreciate them not in spite of their flaws, but because of them. Every cracked wall adds character to a house, just like a birthmark can make a person stand out. The way a door creaks or a window rattles is unique, just like the way a person laughs. My love for these houses could perhaps be compared to the way someone might love an old car that has run faithfully for many years.
I've heard many abandonments referred to as "eyesores". Maybe if people could look past the crumbling exterior and see what a building has to offer aesthetically, they could truly appreciate them. However, many people are hesitant to enter dilapidated abandonments because of their fear of several things: the supernatural, trespassing, and hazards inside the building.
As urban explorers, we make the choice to eliminate our fear by thinking of these things differently from the average person. The supernatural won't bother us if we don't bother them, and the best way to go about it is respecting a property by taking nothing but photographs and leaving as little evidence of your presence behind as possible. I am reassured of this fact because I have never had anything bad happen to me without there being a warning first.
Being caught trespassing can be dealt with in several ways, depending on who catches you. If it's the property owner, you have a much better chance of getting away with an excuse. However, if it's a cop or a security guard, they have usually heard the same excuses before and won't let you off so quickly. I have been caught 3 times, twice by myself and once with a friend. The first time I was caught, I was exploring a house out in the woods that was falling apart, and the property owner was walking by and saw my car parked outside. She found me inside the house and asked to see my pictures. I showed her, and she said she thought they were beautiful. She invited me to her house further up the driveway. She was (and still is) one of the cutest little old wrinkled ladies I have ever met. She gave me cookies and a soda and asked me about my photography and past explorations. She told me about how her daughter used to live in the house until she died of cancer years ago, how she didn't want to tear the house down or remodel it, and how she didn't really have a good reason why. She told me how she believed that houses were sacred shells of someone's past. I told her I agreed, and we realized that we both appreciated the beauty of that which has been left behind and the importance of preserving someone's legacy. The second time I was caught was less eventful; I was taking pictures of a house from the outside, getting up close to the brick wall to take a picture of an old electric meter. A harsh voice behind me suddenly said "What are you taking pictures of?" and made me jump. I turned around to face her, realizing I had no idea how long she had been standing there. I told her I was a photography student and that I loved old buildings. She frowned and told me that she thought I should leave. I politely said I understood and got back in my car and drove away. The third time I was caught was on the grounds of an abandoned prison, where a friend and I were stopped by a security officer. We explained that we were photography students and simply didn't see the "No Trespassing" signs. He was very congenial and let us take a few more pictures of the outside before sending us on our way. The best way to avoid being caught is to scope out the property for security signs or people and keep quiet when making an entrance. The best way to avoid getting in trouble if you still end up getting caught is to have a valid excuse other than curiosity ready; mine is that I'm a photography student doing a project (which is half true). It's also a good idea to keep a student-like appearance in order to not look like a troublemaker.
Hazards inside a building can include rusty metal objects, broken glass, asbestos contamination, flooding, unsafe floorboards, plain darkness, homeless people, and wild animals. We prepare ourselves against most of these things. My arsenal of safety gear includes a gas mask, a first aid kit, a flashlight, appropriate clothing, and a swiss army knife. I have only come across a homeless person once; he didn't notice me thanks to what seemed to be his delusional state of mind. The only wild animal I have ever come across is a dead raccoon.
In spite of all of these preventative measures, many people remain unconvinced that entering an abandoned site is a good idea for any reason whatsoever. They are unwilling to put themselves in a position to be hurt in any way. I’ve had friends who have gone bungee jumping, rock climbing and skydiving refuse to set foot in abandoned buildings. This is part of the reason I am so fascinated with abandonments; people refuse to set foot in something other people just like them used to inhabit. They live in a house now—why won’t they go inside one that nobody lives in? Doesn’t the fact that it’s empty make it even better to explore? They not only happen to forget about it, but they want to forget; they want to ignore these "eyesores" and move on with their lives. I cannot imagine how many important historical discoveries have been left rotting away on dusty shelves of abandoned houses because of peoples' unwillingness to step across a threshold. I see this in many relationships, too; many people are unwilling to get to know someone else because of their rough exterior or their first impression.
Why is it that when something man has created changes enough to be so different that they look nothing like the original, society feels like it has to be either fixed or destroyed? In the United States, buildings are constantly being torn down and replaced. In Italy, for example, you can walk up the street and visit an Etruscan tomb nestled between a restaurant and an art shop. Everything is old in Europe; everything is new in the States. We always want to start over; forget renovation, forget trying to salvage a beautiful building; we need a Walmart parking lot more than we need beauty. I love abandonments because nobody else does. Nobody else is willing to see what these structures have to offer for their minds and their hearts; they are only willing to see what it has to offer for their pockets.
My love of urban exploration has many facets, but the most significant I think, is what it has taught me about finding allure in odd places. I have learned to look past the ugliness of people as well as buildings to discover what beauties lay beneath, and I believe it is an important lesson that can be learned by everyone. I have learned how to make those assets come alive through my photographs, just as I have learned how to bring out the better part of someone's personality through conversation. Unfortunately, most of society refuses to make themselves vulnerable long enough to let in some of the more eccentric beauties that life has to offer.
Personally, I prefer to leave my heart and my mind open as much as possible; I'm afraid I might miss some of life's beautiful flaws.

An Urbexer's Rant

So before I start writing new pieces about urban exploration, I want to post up some older pieces that I've written that I think are necessary to put up.

NOTE:
The following piece was originally a letter to a reporter who wrote an article about urban explorers and all their "illegal/dangerous/stupid" activities after a local abandoned mansion was set on fire. She made no distinction between explorers and vandals, and so I got really, really mad (especially since my username on UER was mentioned in the article), and wrote a very angry letter to her explaining why we are different from people like her who just can't seem to separate legality from beauty, art and respect. I wanted to show her that we give more respect to property than the owners do and that the concept of "The New" (i.e. material possessions) is something urbexers hate and something that has taken over society. Urban exploring is a very noble and daring activity, and the feelings behind it are very much rooted in personal beliefs. When I read this over again and re-wrote it as an actual creative writing piece, I realized this is unlike most of my other writing. It's not funny; it's angry, hurt, frustrated and disgusted with the world. It has a tone of superiority reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk's style, which I love. I think urban exploration and photography are the only things I can really write about this passionately at this point in my life. All of this writing came naturally—I remember the actual letter-writing took about 20 minutes, and revising it and adding to it later took about half an hour (after I re-read that horrible, stupid woman's article online).

Here's the link to the article, you should definitely read it, and check out the comments at the end-- they're great!
Click Here for The Article That Started My Rant!

And here's my response:


Dear Ms. Stephan,

Real explorers don’t kid around. We kid around and we end up injured, infected, in jail, or dead. Urban explorers are often given a bad reputation by graffiti artists and subway surfers. You know, the ones who ride the subway trains like surfboards and end up getting impaled through the eye by a piece of metal sticking out of the ceiling. You can call us illegal. You can call us criminals, but we are every bit as noble as your boy scouts, journalists, photographers and policemen. We take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints. We are the ones who protect your forgotten treasures from the tourist wishing to collect knick-knacks that aren't theirs, the land developer wishing to raze the skeletons of your lives, and the ignorant so-called "artist" who sees these cracked and broken shells as just another canvas for their postmodern depictions of teen angst flowing from the nozzle of a spray can.
I've seen the ones who call themselves urbexers; sometimes it's hard to tell if their bullshitting or not. They usually are. Those are the ones who arrive on the scene and while I'm taking pictures of your past, they're in the other room pocketing "collectibles". Real urban explorers never collect; we don't treasure the tangible, and we never covet. We desire only to see, learn, protect and preserve in memories and photographs.
Our activities are not crimes, but duties. We are the ones who have taken it upon ourselves to document and preserve everything you and your society have abandoned. We know everything about you that you've forgotten in the haze of new friends, new jobs, new schools, new possessions, and new lives. We loathe The New: we see it as an infestation, a disease and an obsession. We've learned to appreciate The Old, and we detest those who can't understand why. We creep and crawl over your property because we care more about your empty shells than you do. We make them ours for a night while you sleep peacefully in your beds with the bulldozers crouching outside of your window, waiting for the next morning when this masterpiece of abandonment will be reduced to splinters. We are the ones who make sure that it still exists as a whole—in our photographs and in our souls.
What is it like? you might feel compelled to ask. It's safe to say that it's like nothing you know or ever could know. It's like knowing a secret that twists you so forcefully inside and out that your only option is to make it your obsession. It is like a previously dormant instinct, newly awakened. It is like we are the ghosts—the only ethereal radiance that haunts your forgotten hallways is the gleam of our diffused flashlights shining through the dust. It's like picking up a broken antique doll with a cracked porcelain face, staring at it straight in its eerie blue eyes and seeing it come to life in your hands and tell you volumes about every child that once stroked its now dirt-encrusted hair. Other times it's like watching the same doll get sold to a collector who repaints it and gives it a brand new blonde head of hair. You call this restoration. We call this discarding true beauty.
You could never understand what it's like to hold onto the top rung of a storm drain ladder and watch the water rise to your feet, and then your knees, and then your waist, and you try desperately to force open the manhole cover from underneath that you just barely reached in time, having tried two others already that led into the middle of busy streets full of people like you. People like you could never understand what it's like to enter a private world of your hands and the camera and the subject, all communicating silently as you step over broken glass on a rotting wooden floor to take a closer picture of something else you left behind. You could never understand what it's like to feel the adrenaline rush when you see a cop's flashlight or hear a property owner's voice, and what it's like to have to make a decision whether to run or explain yourself. We usually run, because people like you blink at us when we explain ourselves and wonder why we don't just join them in their bigger, better fucked up world of The New.
We are not impressed by your newer, "better" structures. We are explorers of your past, and we are interested only in that which has been lost, forgotten, abandoned, broken, ignored, destroyed, trampled upon and left behind. We find beauty in your ugliness; we are those others you've heard of whose treasure is your trash. While you slip into your silken slumbers, we are donning backpacks, cameras, gloves, harnesses, tripods and gas masks. Our dreams are your nightmares.
The horror movies you watch never meet our eyes because we refuse to let a fiction invade our reality. Everyone is afraid for a reason, but we are the ones who refuse to make your excuses a part of our lives, and it leaves us strong and thirsty for risk. For you, asbestos is something to flee from; for us, it is the herald of an adventure. Every dark passageway and dusty staircase you shrivel away from is the same one that we yearn to travel.
Our greatest find might be that mansion you drive by every day with its plywood barriers and crumbling Roman columns. Most of our discoveries are found not by searching, but by realizing. We might suddenly remember an ancient house that no one has lived in for years and the fact that it is less than a block away. These are the greatest discoveries. For a while we were just like you. We forgot we knew about them.
During the day we are just like you. We have jobs, families and schools. We give back to society the way society wants us to give back. But when the sun sets we have a different agenda. We are stealth. We are adventurers of the night, and our only obsession is to creep down the asbestos-filled labyrinths of your past. We know everything you don't know about yourself. We are unbreakable and fearless.
We are urban explorers, and we go where you don’t.

A more formal introduction

So I've finally decided to give this blog a main topic. Obviously I may stray from the path occasionally, but I plan for this blog to mostly be about urban exploration. I enjoy writing about it, there are so many subgenres of urbexing and so many philosophies, codes and concepts woven into it that I can always find something to write about.

Anyone reading this who is also a member of UER (Urban Exploration Resource for those of you who don't know), thank you. I have a great amount of respect for all of the UER members who truly care about urbexing and really have learned to respect abandonments instead of deface them or scrap everything they can out of it for money. A true urbexer is one who gets all of the personal satisfaction they can out of their explorations through art, writing, history, photography, journalism, etc without actually taking anything that doesn't belong to them.

I believe urban exploration is an art form, and honestly, it's somewhat irrelevant that it's illegal most of the time. Urbexers know exactly what they're doing and are willing to risk the consequences for the sake of their art, and true artistic beauty is not, should not, and cannot be defined by its legality.


For any of you who still aren't clear on what exactly urban exploration is, it's an underground hobby that involved exploring abandonments. Abandonments is a very general term, because urbexers generally explore anything that can be considered "behind the scenes". For example, draining. Draining is exploring storm drains, usually by entering through a manhole. The tunnel systems in different regions can be very complex and fascinating to explore, while other drain systems are just one long, boring tunnel after another leading to the same places over and over again. Abandoned hospitals, mental institutions, schools and prisons are hotspots for explorers. I enjoy buildings like these because of all the history that can be learned before you actually enter them; when I do finally explore them, it's that much better if I find something that I can link back to what I already knew about the building's history. Urban exploring is also an inspiration for many photographers; not every urbexer is a photographer, but for many explorers, photography is a hobby that goes hand in hand with exploring. Most urban explorer's follow a kind of unwritten code, which is basically to take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints. Obviously not everyone follows this, but it's a good thing to keep in mind. For example, (speaking for myself here), I wouldn't respect someone who would tag a building with ugly graffiti, but someone who truly believes their graffiti is art and who actually has talent is someone I could admire. Someone who would strip an entire place of valuables to sell on Ebay is not someone I could respect. People who take pictures of themselves smoking cigarettes in an old wooden house and then post them up all over Flickr or Photobucket is not someone I could ever respect. Urban explorers develop a knack for scoping out a particular building or location, assessing the situation and acting accordingly. For example, smoking in an abandoned house made out of wood is a bad idea. Smoking in an abandoned facility with marble floors and tile walls is something else. Smoking is a bad idea either way, but you hopefully get my point.

So there was your introduction to the world of urban exploration. I DEFINITELY didn't cover even the tip of the iceberg, but there will be more writing to come.


For those of you who are interested in urban exploring and want to know more about it, definitely check out "The Art of Urban Exploration", by Ninjalicious. Yep, it's his alias-- and it's very appropriate, he was one of the great gods of urban exploration. Check it out if you ever get a chance!

I'm going to leave you with a few random photos I've taken during past explorations!