Apparently, there are people on Steemit who like me love abandoned places! Steemian @customnature called into life the 'Abandoned Shit Weekly Contest', I missed week 1, but am happy to have stumbled upon the week 2 call for entries. The theme for this week: Homes!
Doel, Belgium, an abandoned city
Quite a short drive from my home (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) lies Doel, a city in Belgium that's literally existing under the smoke of a nuclear reactor. Although this doesn't sound like an ideal place to live anyway, people have lived here for ages and made their homes here.
When the government decided this city should be closed down and cleaned up (in order to be able to expand the Antwerp harbor) the people of Doel didn't want to give up their homes. Because of regulations, they were in their right to keep living in their homes as long as they wanted. The government therefore wasn't able to force people to move, but they could make it so that people would be less inclined to stay. That's why the government would shut down every house, piece by piece, once a person or family moved out.
So what was left in the end? A city with closed down houses, no shops, no stores, and just a few people still occupying their once dream house.
People could still choose to live here, but it would get less rewarding to keep doing so.
A ghost city
This is why Doel became a ghost city. A dream for a photographer and other artists, a nightmare for the people still living there. But I had heard enough about the place to have it on my photography wish list. So I went, on a very cold winters day, to Doel, to see what I could still capture of its soul and current state.
[Do you see the WHALE painted on the side of this house? Didn't mean much to me then... Now the word has meaning!]
As you can see, a lot of houses were painted by graffiti artists. I've really enjoyed finding the best pieces and taking pictures of them! That's the value of photography, even after this city is destroyed I have made some of the work that was done immortal :-)
[Especially love that bird!]
Entering homes
After roaming the streets for a while it was time to enter some homes. Even though most houses were clearly abandoned it still felt like 'breaking and entering'! Houses normally are such protected and personal spaces I really felt weird going through an open front door and seeing the left-overs of what was once a home. Some houses were still clearly inhabited and were decorated with papers saying 'I still live here, please respect my privacy'!
[Of course, broken glass doesn't look inviting!]
Once you're inside the house the real treasure seeking begins. Empty rooms, painted walls, dusty couches, stained and ripped of wallpaper... Sometimes I was confused by what was left by the previous homeowners and what was added or rearranged by other visitors and artists. But that's also what's fun about visiting an abandoned place: what part of it is still real? What part of it isn't?
[What do you think, was the text 'I watched porn here' left by the previous inhabitant or did an artist want to create a joke in this room?]
[Empty bottles everywhere. Maybe some people have lived here temporarily as well after the house was left. Why not? This would have been a free 'roof over your head' for a while!]
[I loved this left couch, the 'ALONE' text, the light coming through the window and creating shadows on the wall. Would this house have felt less depressed when it was still filled with people? Or is the moody feeling in this picture what this home always felt like?]
Start and end
I want to close this entry to the 'Abandoned Shit Contest' with a picture of a radio I found in one of the houses. When I look at this picture now I think about times I've had to move. The house you just bought or rented is still empty, you are going to start somewhere and make it a home. The first things you bring to the house are coffee, tea, cookies, some light bulbs and... a radio. Since music makes working bearable :-)
If you look at this picture of the radio it's clearly covered in white paint. The start of creating almost all homes is painting, and white is probably the most used color for that.
So in essence, this picture is a symbol of the beginning and end of creating a 'Home'. Maybe this radio was once splashed in paint when people moved in this house. Now it's left, without an owner, waiting for a bulldozer to demolish the walls and roofs. A relique of home.
All pictures on steemit.com/@soyrosa are created and edited by me, Rosanne Dubbeld, 2001-2018. Contact me if you want to discuss licensing or collaborations on creative projects :-)