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Beauty in ruins: abandoned places in Europe and Asia – in pictures

 

David de Rueda, Tuesday 30 June 2015 , Source

 

The ghost town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl, and derelict sites around Europe and central Asia became evocative locations for urban explorer David de Rueda on a six-week tour discovering hidden relics of the recent past – as part of Nikon’s Project Spotlight: Abandoned Places

 

 

 

Lost in space

This image is the result of 180km of off-road driving in the Kazakhstan desert, followed by 45km of walking in a highly-restricted area. We arrived and there they were: two relics of the space race in a huge abandoned warehouse. It may be the single most epic scene I’ve discovered since picking up a camera.
All photographs: David de Rueda

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Night souls

In an otherwise deserted area on Iceland’s south coast is this long-forgotten wreck of a Douglas DC-3 aircraft. I arrived at the location at 4am and, as we waited, polar lights appeared on the horizon. I admired this magic show until dawn and used a 90-second exposure, with some light painting added inside the plane, to capture this image.

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The signal

Under the congress room of the Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria I discovered a place that seemed to be from another planet. I used my torch to light it up and discovered everything was covered with ice.

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Time capsule

 

 

In Budapest I explored this derelict train graveyard. It’s in the middle of an active depot and I felt like a child escaping reality to walk for a few hours in an imagined world of steel monsters.

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High frequency

This picture was taken in a disused experimental power facility near Moscow, which was closely guarded by half a dozen dogs. After a little persuasive discussion, the caretaker let us in. As the sun was setting, I had a few minutes to find the perfect point of view.

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The mothership

Linnahall is a former concert hall in Tallinn, Estonia. With a two-minute exposure, I could reveal the architecture of the place, which otherwise sat in darkness. The central framing gives the photograph its power, drawing the eye right to the centre. To me, it almost looks like a spaceship.

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Eternal wait

This is a waiting room in the remains of the hospital in Pripyat, an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, close to the border with Belarus. It was abandoned a couple of days after the Chernobyl disaster. This room caught my eye with its colours and decaying plant life. You get the sense that time has been frozen here.

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Time implosion

A room in the former hospital in Pripyat and one of the first buildings I explored in the city. The oven appears to have exploded in the centre of the room and destroyed everything around it.

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Pripyat cafe

This place, again in the city of Pripyat, used to be a cafe. I wanted to highlight the beautiful glasswork and create something unique with a long exposure and light painting. We constructed one main source of light inside the building, a second light behind the Pripyat sign to create a sense of depth and a third illuminating the cafe’s original sign.

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Child dream

This is from our last day in Pripyat. For the three previous days I asked myself how I could capture the famous ferris wheel from a new and original point of view. Luckily, my wish to have some snow was fulfilled, providing a dreamy ambience that totally changed Pripyat. Positioning myself on a rooftop next to the wheel, I finally captured the picture I was looking for.

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