T A B U L A R A S A photography
Photography, primarily urbex, travel and landscape.
The Yaniv train station outside Pripyat isn’t very impressive. If you follow some rails into the woods, however, you’ll soon be greeted by the sight of railcars and locomotives rusting away among the pines. Since some of them are quite radioactive, they were allegedly derailed intentionally in order to permanently strand them in the Exclusion … Continue reading Of Rust and Rail
The Exclusion Zone has an eeriness to it which is heightened by the giant power plant looming at its center. An already massive building housing four reactors was made even more so once the Sarcophagus was slid into place over it late in 2016. This gleaming new dome, at over three hundred feet tall, is … Continue reading The Chernobyl Reactors
Continuing the theme of the previous post, these are more photos from the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl featuring stunning overgrowth of the last three decades. This last rooftop shot really shows that “drowned’ quality of many of the buildings. Our guide had told us that winter can be a better time to visit, as … Continue reading Back Under
Abandoned places get overgrown; the town of Pripyat is no exception. But there is simply more here, a case where a quantitative difference leads to a qualitative one. When hundreds of square miles are left untended, the result is that these once-inhabited areas don’t just feel overgrown, they feel submerged. The place where I felt … Continue reading Submergence
I have, as of this writing, been doing urban exploration for a decade. I have traveled across the American rust belt and beyond specifically to photograph the old, the decayed, and the abandoned. I have also felt, in recent years, that I have been pursuing diminishing returns; after a while, each ruined building begins to … Continue reading Where Words Fail
There runs, under Kiev, a vast network of tunnels. Built over a century ago, they provide water drainage for this hilly city and thus protect against landslides. It isn’t entirely illegal to enter them, but neither is it quite legal. It is, as the guide intones before guiding you down through a manhole at the … Continue reading Subterranean Pastoral
Pecherska Lavra, or the monastery of the caves, sprawls across one Kiev’s many hills. Unfortunately, the day I was there, the caves were not open to tourists. The churches, however, made for great photos, until a stern lady shooed me and my camera out. In general, Orthodox churches are more photogenic than others. Catholics, too, … Continue reading The Monastery of the Caves
