This last batch of recovered files from 2011 is probably my only and very modest foray into #urbex, apparently taken on an old Nokia phone. The space would feature in a @suzieselman music video, so all credit to finding the location and having the guts to “trespass” goes to her.
I love how weird and ghostly the image rendering is in all of these. The metadata says that these were taken on an N97 mini, and yet, for the life of me, I can’t remember ever owning one of those, especially when it was supposed to have a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens. These do not look like they came out of that.
No, I’m pretty sure I used a Nokia 7650 with a measly 0.3 MP, and I love it.
I don’t think I ever paid attention to what was written on the newspaper I photographed in slide 4. The biggest word near the middle says “Sunday,” indicating that this is an artifact of An-Nahar’s Sunday supplement. Above that, the words “other fires” peek from under the fold. The article in the three columns in the bottom-right is a play-by-play of some soccer match.
I wish I’d actually done more urban exploration while I was in Lebanon; so many of these abandoned spaces are mausoleums to fascinating times and lives. The securitization of space made that practically unthinkable, however; I didn’t even feel comfortable carrying a camera around in the street.
I wonder how many houses like this one remain standing. Have they finally demolished everything they can?
“Life is a memory;
Yesterday’s reverie.
Life is a memory;
Today is all that we are.”