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Urban Exploration
A Urban exploration, often shortened to ‘urbex’ or ‘UE’, is the exploration of man-made buildings or structures, often of a considerable age and usually abandoned ruins or the little-seen parts of the man-made environment. Among the sites commonly visited by ‘urbexers’ are disused factories, hospitals and schools, bridges, and storm-drain networks.
B UE is a hobby that comes with a number of risks attached. Storm drains, for example, are not designed with human access as their primary use. During periods of heavy rain, they can become flooded, potentially proving fatal for any urbexers who happen to be down there at such times. Many abandoned buildings may be structurally unsafe with broken glass or damaged floors, or even harmful chemicals.
C Recent television shows have packaged the hobby for a popular audience, and a documentary series on the History Channel led to further publicity. The series travelled around the world showing little-known underground structures in remote areas as well as some which are right under the feet of city-dwellers. UE has also featured in fictional films such as After, a thriller set in Moscow’s subways, showing urbexers caught up in extreme situations.
D So what kind of person is attracted to UE? The culture is mostly, but not completely, male. It’s international, with groups around the world, but it’s too various in its motives and methods to form anything like a community. It’s not a hobby for everyone – or, to put it another way, it’s hardly a hobby for anyone! Having said that, there are a few different categories of urbexers.
E The first type is the ‘adventurer’. Photography features heavily in the hobby, so adventurers specializing in the ‘hero shot’ long to post pictures of themselves standing on the edge of bridges or buildings, for instance. These images, usually shot from behind, appear to have taken their inspiration from Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, the famous painting by Caspar David Friedrich, which shows a dark-coated traveller on top of a peak, with mist, suggesting the unknown, spreading out beneath him. When it comes to the morals of UE, many urbexers follow the approach of cave explorers and outdoor hikers: ‘Take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints’.
F Then there are the ‘preservationists’ as they call themselves. These might be people such as historians or archaeologists who are genuinely committed to creating a clear photographic and textual record of buildings that would otherwise crumble unnoticed, until a property developer arrives to knock them down and build a block of new apartments. Their records are carefully presented on websites, and their identities protected by the use of false names.
G The so-called ‘real’ explorers make up a third group of urbexers. These people are more motivated by underground systems and networks than by single sites. They love the challenge of getting into secure locations and enjoy behaving in a controversial way. Like climbers, ‘real’ explorers experience what’s been called ‘feeding the rat’; the ‘rat’, which exists inside you, lives off your fear and the more fear you feel, the more the rat grows. Consequently, the larger the rat grows the more its appetite needs to be satisfied, which means that you must experience more fear in order to keep the rat happy. ‘Real’ explorers do things like run along train tracks in the brief gaps between trains, depending on their attitude to urbex and how much risk they want to take.
