I find that I do not have much, if anything, to say on this subject from a photographic point of view. The treatment of this subject in the course material is fairly perfunctory and even Alexander (2015) lends little more than two pages to it (page 124 & 125) with just two examples of photographs by Suzanna Davison, of whom I had not come across before.

I have at least though done some reading of my own on the subject. I was in a way surprised that none of the books on psychogeography that I have read recently touch upon the subject at all. Perhaps the elements of danger, trespass, and the fact that there seems to be a lot of activity that goes on underground, really take urban exploration out of the realm of the flâneur. Breaking into a derelict building or infiltrating a sewage system are not exactly strolls.

The most interesting book that I have read that touches on the topic is in fact the first one in which I ever came across the topic, Manaugh (2009), which I first read more than ten years ago. (To be a bit more accurate perhaps the first time I encountered the phenomenon was when I saw Luc Besson’s film Subway back in the late 1980s.) The whole of the second chapter is devoted to “urban covers” who explore the networks of tunnels beneath out cities. This does at least have some striking and impressive examples of subterranean photography.

Otherwise, and coincidentally, the only other book that I have read recently that touches on this is Robert McFarlane’s recent book (2019). Most of this is not about urban exploration, but there is one chapter , Invisible Cities, (page 127 ff.) in which he goes underground in Paris.

One particularly interesting point that MacFarlane makes is in the drawing of a comparison between the activities of these French urban covers and Walter Benjamin’s monumental, but never completed, work The Arcades Project, which perhaps give the lie to my point about psychogeography and flâneury above. This was a multifaceted and kaleidoscopic exploration of the topography, history, mythology, all that you might ever want to know, of Paris. In a way it would have been the ultimate testament of a flâneur, though something that required a great deal more effort than just strolling. The work of the Paris spelunkers is doing a similar sort of thing to the city’s multiple under storeys, and indeed, to coin a phrase, ‘under stories’.

I am quite claustrophobic and would not want to go anywhere like this; even just reading his account of crawling through unbelievably narrower spaces filled me with fear, particularly when MacFarlane admits to his own sense of dread. I therefore have no interest in this sort of urban exploration. Nor do I really have any interest in the activity even when safely above ground. Although I am sure it would be interesting I am concerned about the possible illegality, and threats to personal safety. As a kid I might have been more interested (I have already mentioned the air-raid shelters and bunkers at the factory near where I lived as a child) but not now at my age.

Alexander, J.A.P, (2015).  Perspectives on Place.  London:  Bloomsbury

Macfarlane, R, (2019).  Underland.  London:  Hamish Hamilton

Manaugh, G, (2009).  The BLDG/BLOG Book.  San Francisco:  Chronicle Books

• Coursework
• Home
• Part 3