BBC, “The abandoned buildings of the
Eastern bloc”, Magazine 11 November 2015, (Image copyright Christian Richter)
Christian
Richter spent his teens exploring abandoned buildings in what was then
Communist East Germany. As an adult he's still doing it, but now he takes a
camera to capture the advancing decay of their interiors. My childhood was
surrounded by the industrial, crumbling buildings of the former German
Democratic Republic - lots of ramshackle structures, and power stations. I was
14 years old when the Berlin Wall came down. It was a huge change for us.
People didn't know how it would all turn out. It was very exciting - the start
of something new. At first we visited the West a lot just to see what it was
like, and although quite a few people moved away, I stayed.Because so many
people had left, everything began to fall into disrepair. That's when I started
visiting abandoned buildings, sometimes with friends and sometimes on my own.
Then much later, when a friend gave me a digital camera, I was able to capture
the beauty of these old places.
They
are very peaceful places because no-one ever goes there. The way they
deteriorate, when nature starts to take over, reminds me that everything is
transient. There's a feeling that it is the end of time and you don't find that
kind of atmosphere anywhere else. Over the past seven or eight years I must
have visited about 1,000 buildings in Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and
Poland. I have to go to a lot of places to get one good image or find something
that excites me - many of them are just empty and not particularly beautiful. It's often hard to get inside - I've had to find tunnels
or climb through windows. I've travelled long distances to see a building and
then found it's been torn down, or I simply couldn't get in. Sometimes I can
tell there might be something special inside, but it's more like a game of
chance - maybe I'll find something, maybe I won't. At some point I may hit the
jackpot but there's a lot of work behind it - it's very hard to find this kind
of beauty. I once got a tip-off about an old doctor's surgery and I think I was
the first person to go inside for 10 or 15 years. It was full of cobwebs and
felt slightly mystical. It was like going back in time. The way the light was
coming in gave it an amazing atmosphere. Former industrial plants are also falling into ruin, and
psychiatric hospitals have been closed down. No-one looks after them and
there's no money for their upkeep - it would be too expensive to preserve them.
When the roof is falling apart and water comes through the ceilings, moss and
lichen grow. If the windows are closed it can get very warm in summer and
plants start to take over. Often there's a very mouldy smell, but I like it
when nature starts taking the building back, and when things are blooming and
growing inside. We used to have lots of inns in the east of Germany - every
village had one, with a bar, a ballroom, a function room or a theatre. But as
people have left the villages and moved to the towns, they're just not used any
more. When I see an old
building in this state I can imagine its former glory, but it's always sad that
it's falling apart and not being used.
I
keep the locations secret to stop vandals damaging them - some people don't
value them and when they get inside it's not just the plants taking over, it's
people who are tearing down the banisters or spraying graffiti tags on the
walls. If someone wanted to restore a building, they could write to me and if I
thought they were actually the kind of person who might genuinely do something
to help, then of course I would try put them in touch with the right people.
That would be theoretically possible, but it hasn't happened yet.
I
never break in - I always try to find a way to get inside that doesn't involve
damaging anything. That might mean going through a hole in the cellar, over a
fence, through cracks, through a window - there's a lot of climbing involved.
It's hard work and I have to be quite fit. Some buildings are so tightly
secured that you have to be a real climber in order to get in without breaking
anything. It is illegal to go into these places and I have been stopped by
police - I've been escorted out of buildings two or three times and issued with
a notice, but they've never pressed any charges. They seem to let it go because
I'm just taking photos.Some of these places are very atmospheric, very moody. I
once photographed a former crematorium where bodies had been burned. It made a
deep impression on me.
See full article: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34575019
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου