urbanexploration

Have you ever walked by a beautiful castle and wondered what was inside? I have... and I’m lucky that I have seen quite a few from the other side of the door.

This semi-abandoned power station located in Hungary is a true gem among industrial locations and was once Europe’s most advanced power station.

Exploring the former house-monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party is one of the most exciting explorations I have ever done.

Who wouldn’t want to explore one of the world’s most haunted places given the chance? Okay, on second thought, maybe most people... Well, while on holiday with my family in Venice, I was recently given that chance and I wasn’t going to turn it down.

For the past few years, photographer Will Ellis has been locating, exploring, and documenting obscure abandoned places in New York City. His images show everything from the ruins of old hospitals to abandoned subway terminals -- and sometimes the photos are one last glimpse of those spaces before they're reclaimed or reduced to rubble by developers or the government.

Photographer CJ from substormflow is passionate about exploring sewer systems, and he wants to show the world the unique underground architecture that most people never get to see. The video above is a glimpse into the hidden system of old culverts and sewers beneath the bustling city of Manchester in England.

Here's a 5-minute video by Seeker Stories about how young urban explorers are connecting through Instagram and teaming up to explore the hidden places of New York City. They risk arrest -- and often death -- to see and photograph the city from perspectives that ordinary people will never get to experience.

What leads a family’s decision as they decide to stand up, open their door and walk out, leaving everything behind? Forgotten homes sit scattered across our country like eerie time capsules filled with stories, rotting away under the unforgiving power of nature.

Johnny Joo is a name you might recognize. Not too long ago we featured a series of images Joo captured at a ‘train graveyard’ hidden in the forests of North Carolina. This time, we’re back with some more recent urbex work of his that takes us into the ruins of an abandoned film school that was chock full of items that are doubly interesting to us as photographers.

One of the draws of Urban Exploration photography, or Urbex, is the chance that you'll discover and photograph something truly strange and unique. A building abandoned for so long that nobody realizes the treasures hidden within. Or, in this case, a 'train graveyard' with over 70 dilapidated subways, trains and busses in the middle of a North Carolina forest.

The world of Urbex (short for "Urban Exploration") photography is a secretive one. In general, Urbex photographers keep purposely silent on the specific locations where they've shot, and for the most part, it's not because they want to keep these dilapidated finds entirely to themselves.

The reason why asking an Urbex photographer where a photo was taken is likely to be met with a vague answer or none at all is perfectly illustrated by the story of the Belgian snow cats in the photo above.

The dangers of urban exploration photography are well-known. However, despite this danger, it’s not often we hear of any big names in Urbex photography having major accidents or run-ins with the law. That changed a bit this week when a photographer who goes by the pseudonym The Other Side shared the story of how he was threatened with serious legal consequences for photographing a partially abandoned French factory.

Cleveland-based photographer Seph Lawless's first job was in a bustling Ohio mall. Today, that same mall appears in his photo series and book Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall -- a haunting series that pays homage to these victims of the recession and the online shopping revolution.

His photos really need no further introduction, and so instead of spending time describing what you could simply scroll down and see, we sat down with Lawless (digitally) to talk about the hows and whys behind this eerie photo book.

Urban exploration photography has gotten quite a bit of publicity in recent years, with more and more photographers taking their cameras to off-limits and/or abandoned parts of their city in order to see and capture what most people never get a chance to. While it may be a fun pastime of practitioners and one that leads to beautiful images, not everyone is a fan.

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) warns that photographs shot by urban explorers could pose a national security risk by aiding terrorists in their surveillance and planning.

Last year, New York-based guerrilla historian, urban explorer and photographer Steve Duncan gave an 18-minute talk (seen in the video above) to the audience at TEDxPhoenixville. Duncan spoke on his motivations for going deep into the underground infrastructure in major cities around the world, peeling back layers of a city to see and document things that are hidden to people above ground.