Deconstruction

This image of an abandoned building in the process of being pulled down is marred somewhat, as it looks like a still taken from a TV screen. That's because it's a photo of a photo.

The original is a very high-quality transparency shot on an old 6x9 folding camera, reproduced by holding the large negative to my laptop screen and snapping a digital photo. As you can see, this is not a high-fidelity means of reproducing slide film.

Sadly, this is the only image I have on film of this building, which has since vanished from the earth along with two other towers into a pile of concrete dust and long, twisted spaghetti strands of steel.

This group of deconstructed buildings is right next to the student housing block where I now live with my wife and son, having arrived in the city a few months ago. We did not expect grand accommodations, and we were not surprised. In fact, our building is so old and decayed it is rumoured to be coming down next year. Living here, now, is therefore inescapably depressing. The cracked and crumbling cement walkways outside the building are a constant reminder we live in a condemned space.

Shortly after arriving, I decided to photograph the nearby de-building site, which consisted of three old office towers, long abandoned, covered in graffiti from top to bottom, inside and out. I was inspired partly by my distaste for the apartment where I live – I have a long-held antipathy for mass housing – and partly by my general ambivalence for the urban environment. Too much cement, the depressing ice-solid shit of modernity that it is, let’s tear it all down.


So I got up early one winter morning and stuffed my two new-but-old medium format cameras into an undersized shoulder bag. My tiny digital camera would serve as a light meter. I walked across the road to a small oasis of trees that graced the backside of the old buildings. The site was fenced off, but not secured, so it wasn’t hard to lift one of the posts from its holder and squeeze my way in.

My first stop was immediately below the building you see in the photo at the top of this post. From underneath its belly, I pointed the heavy camera skyward and shot a series of huge airplanes, 747s and A340s, just as their noses appeared to touch the already crumbling walls of the top floors (those who know photography understand how a telephoto lens compresses distances, so it really did look spectacularly dangerous, particularly in this post-9/11 world). The image below, sadly, is just a small commuter or business jet.



Next I walked carefully, along piles of broken stone and cement blocks, to a building as-yet untouched by the wrecking ball. It was gutted, long ago, and full of graffiti from top to bottom. I made my way slowly upward, stopping every few floors to take photos of the artwork on the walls and outward to the surrounding urban sprawl. I reloaded the film in my main camera once, my fingers now trembling from the cold, then went right up to the roof.

What a feeling, to stand at the top of a completely deserted building site. To be near the centre of a crowded European city, one of perhaps a million nearby humans, and yet be so immediately alone. I snapped a few more photos and took a moment to look out at the horizon and ponder my place in the world.

After a few minutes I glanced downward, considering new angles for my mission. Outside the de-building site, a police vehicle crawled slowly down the street.

Holy shit! I was trespassing on a building site that had large signs outside saying ‘don’t come in here’ (albeit in a language foreign to me). What’s the fine for trespassing anyway? Did some local spot me and call it in? They’re so fucking rule-abiding in this country, you never know. I hauled my aging out-of-shape ass down sixteen flights of stairs, puffing like a criminal in the dock by the midway point. No elevators in the belly of this skeletal beast.

By the time I squeezed back out the fence I had a big shit-eating grin on my face. That was fun, and a little risk thrown in just made it all the more so.

And the photos? Well, the images included here are just the digital proofs I shot to measure the light. The real images were on film. Or were they?

Like I said at the top, there’s only one. I loaded the film incorrectly in my main camera (an old machine but a new purchase), and shot about 24 frames on the paper side of 120 film. You don’t need to know much about film photography to know that shooting on paper doesn’t leave you with much.

Just like the buildings, those photos are all gone, save for the memory of what I saw through the viewfinder.