Urbex

Although the history of Urban Exploration is quite recent (approximately two centuries), its origins are traced back to an episode happened on November 3, 1793, when a legendary "explorer" of the Paris Catacombs, Philibert Aspairt, became famous for his premature death in that vast network of underground tunnels, in which he had lost himself.

Even this question cannot be answered with certainty, urbex is many things and even nothing. Each of us has happened to stop in front of a large and sumptuous villa or a historic building, wondering why such beauty is overwhelmed by uncontrolled vegetation and degradation so tangible as to tear our eyes apart. Over the years, urbex has incorporated both a social and political variant, since this initiative, changing over time, has become a concrete commitment to denounce, safeguard and protect abandoned urban places, freeing them from inevitable decay. Since this practice is not codified, it is exercised by explorers or "urbexers" in different ways and with different rules, but in general it can be said that there is a rule valid worldwide which is that of respect for the places visited, a rule that translates into the motto "take only photographs and leave only footprints". Many fans of this theme try to enhance these environments and propose them to media platforms to make known the lost wonders of their countries and also carrying out awareness-raising and fundraising projects, through the dissemination and communication tools that we have today in the majority.

It's love for the unknown and what manages to capture a target and the human eye. With this spirit, some groups have gone as far as one of the symbolic places of urban archeology: Pryp'jat, or rather the dramatic story of the city built at the gates of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which became known thanks to the 2019 HBO miniseries of the same name, which shows the background of an event that marked the whole of Europe with great historical accuracy. Italy, as every Italian knows, is filled to the brim with artistic and architectural wonders. Many of them are left to neglect and become famous urbex destinations, such as noble palaces, sixteenth-century convents and completely frescoed and decorated country residences.

From this activity, which is increasingly practiced, there may also be opportunities to report the current situation of degradation in which large areas of the territory are found. At this point we must ask ourselves what drives people from all walks of life and ages to venture into these abandoned buildings. A first answer can be summarized under the title of "Indiana Jones" syndrome which in our age, where everything is connected and granted just a click away, has become accentuated due to the lack of mystery, taste for discovery and wonder.

 Once upon a time we traveled to satisfy this need, the most daring even set off aimlessly in their explorations, but now with satellites we know every inch of the world, so here the interest turns to the territory near home, here is that old factory which for many is synonymous with decay and neglect, for someone else it becomes the means to satisfy the thirst for mystery. You explore for the adrenaline and the charm of immersing yourself in the enigma of an unknown place, even if it were a simple old farm house. It also explores why decay has its own charm, like ancient frescoes that can still be glimpsed on the walls of that old villa, in churches where one wonders what happened to religion. 

In abandoned places there is stillness, which is also the essential condition for many good photographs, which therefore become tools of memory, to keep forgotten places alive that maybe in the future will be demolished or collapse on their own. In the urbex field, photography also becomes a means of artistic expression, since in the end we are all children of Ready Made and Pop Art, which taught us to conceive the concept of a work of art in a different way, also giving the possibility to rusty machinery of an old factory, to colored series photographs or sharp cuts in a canvas, to become immortal. Finally, for many, exploring is an act of safeguarding memory and the past, a way to reconstruct and disseminate the history of places that have been important to certain communities. Thus tying them firmly to the place where they were built.

This noteworthy aspect is based on two reasons: it is safer to explore in groups and not alone, this is because abandoned buildings can be dangerous from a structural point of view and by bringing together all common ideas, to focus on creating a union that facilitates the search for places to explore through the passage of information. All this will contribute to making the urbex probably a contemporary artistic current, since their pretexts and principles are in line with everything that is worth preserving and passing on, according to the sense of common responsibility, which every lover of art forms considers essential.

Sometimes you can happen to find masterpieces of art of particular value in the abandoned villas.