URBAN EXPLORER
Dilapidated castles, abandoned factories, nature overgrown amusement parks: 'urban explorers' move in and capture the decay in photographs. Bob Thissen is an urbexer from the very beginning. His films and reports go all over the world.
Text Hans van Wetering Photography Bob ThissenHe is about to leave again, 'an old naval base' this time. Where exactly he doesn't say, because that is now anathema in the world of urban explorers. Locations are kept secret to prevent the place in question from being overrun, or worse. "There are people who after they have been inside somewhere destroy everything so that they are the only ones with a photo. You also have some in between who take everything. I knew someone who lived off urbex, who went out with a burlap sack."
Bob Thissen makes TV programmes about urbex, lectures, publishes books, is hired as an expert, including by National Geographic: he has made urbex his profession. His Urbex channel on YouTube has 250,000 subscribers. His films and photo reports have been shot all over the world.
BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURE
But in recent months, everything was suddenly at a standstill. Close borders. "As an urban explorer, you are then forced to sit still, because there is nothing to get in the Netherlands," says Thissen. "If a building becomes vacant here, it is demolished almost immediately, or they board everything up so tightly that you cannot get in. And the economic boom of the past decade didn't help either." In that respect, with the economic crisis in the slipstream of Covid-19, better times are hopefully coming, bankruptcies indeed. "The urbexer is a vulture yes," says Thissen, "a disaster tourist."
If the Netherlands is a desert when it comes to urbex, countries like Germany, Belgium and France, on the other hand, are teeming with dilapidated castles and abandoned industrial complexes. Why do we find that so beautiful anyway? Thissen hesitates. "Because of the stunning architecture of those old factories. They used to make buildings with more attention to detail, based on the idea that people would then work harder. What I also like is when plants overgrow such a building: the idea that what we as humans always lose out to nature anyway."
Beauty is not always visible either, says Thissen: "Sometimes it is a feeling. Only later do you see what it lurks in. It can be very hidden. Sometimes you find beauty in the ugliest things. A cooling tower, for example, has nothing beautiful at first sight. But when I flew into it recently with a drone, I suddenly saw such a sci-fi landscape emerge. You then see beauty emerging where you don't expect it."
BEAUTY OF ABSENCE
Castles and amusement parks are beloved: places where melancholy is for the taking. In the photos Thissen took in one such amusement park, in South Korea, you can still see the children running around in their minds, candyfloss in hand, but their screeching has died down and the tinkling of the machines has given way to wind noise. Factories are another favourite object, such as Ford's in Genk, Belgium. Thissen slipped in not long after it closed (and 6,000 men became unemployed). Bodies hang lost in the production line. It is as if everyone ran away in a panic. In the control room is a wastebasket. The bin bag looks immaculate, as if the cleaner was the only one who had not been notified and so had just gone to work the day after closure, thus replacing that bin bag. Why is this beautiful? Because of the story, because of that which you don't see, that which disappeared. The beauty of absence: invisible beauty, again. "I always look for the story."
Thissen's own website contains tips on what an urbexer should carry. Sturdy shoes, of course, because these abandoned sites are littered with nails. Cut-proof gloves with grip, if a piece of glass has to be removed, and a first-aid kit in case things go wrong anyway. A torch: electricity is cut off, after all. Food and drink, a sleeping bag in case overnight stays prove necessary, for instance because you forgot to bring a door handle: essential tools, because doors fall shut (behind you), and in abandoned buildings they often have no latch. Whatever else is there: telescopic ladder, rope, boat and groin boots, for the trickier missions.
APOCALYPTIC
"Most urbexers run after each other," says Thissen. "I prefer to go to places where others dare not go." And so Thissen filmed in submarines, bivouacked for a week on French warships earmarked for scrapping ("Sometimes the navy would come to check for boarders, then I'd hide in one of the countless cabins."), so he snuck across heavily guarded military sites. "In Russia, I entered a hangar where there were two old space shuttles, a relic of the space race during the Cold War. You first have to go forty kilometres through the desert, and the guards walk around with automatic rifles. It is Russian military territory. You really don't want to get caught there." He did get caught in Ukraine, when he photographed old Russian military aircraft: "They thought I was a Russian spy." It ended with a hissy fit.
Thissen also travelled to Fukushima. Prowled there at night, walking for kilometres along the railway tracks, "dressed as a black ninja". The dark clothing over his white radiation suit served to fool security cameras. "Once inside, I waited until it got light. Then I photographed a few buildings and then returned to the hotel at night. I did that for a few days like that." What he found there: mountains of stinking rubbish, rampant grass, animals taking over the streets. "Wild boars especially, they smell the food left behind in houses and shops and ram the windows with their heads to get to it."
A real beauty experience Thissen did not have there. "It was mostly a lot of trash, pure sadness. Yes, of course you can see the beauty in such an apocalyptic landscape. Beauty is a driving force for me - the beauty of those abandoned, dilapidated buildings touches me - and it's also about the thrill, but over time I have come to find the documentary aspect increasingly important. At Fukushima, nobody gets permission to go in there. They are cleaning up everything there now. Next year, there will be nothing left of that whole disaster. If no one had broken the law there, those images of those empty shops and streets would never have been made, no one would ever have got to see that and a piece of history would have been lost. Capturing things before they disappear forever, that's what I'm all about."
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