In My Series Of Abandoned Places, I Invite You To Travel Through A Post-Apocalyptic World

The inspiration for my book is: What if mankind disappeared completely from the earth? Through the pages, you will see the floors covered by dust, walls cracked, wood rotting, and nature slowly invading those places that used to be full of life, reminding us of the necessity to live in harmony with our habitat. Nature cannot resist much longer the pressure and damage Man is doing. Through the pages, I will take the reader on a journey with me to castles, schools, hospitals, factories, and churches that have been forgotten by us.

I definitely wanted to convey an environmental message in my work by showing what the world would be like if we weren’t there anymore, meaning that if we continue in this way, humanity's disappearance could be one of the consequences. That’s what I prefer working on when ivy takes over everything. We can see what the world could look like if humans disappeared from Earth. We are all fascinated by this post-apocalyptic vision. Maybe we need to be the witness of that to enjoy what we have and the time in front of us. As I said before, the main thing for me is that people create their own stories when they are watching my photographs.

I think my pictures act as a new kind of “Memento Mori”; they are here to remind us that everything has an end and that we should enjoy it while it lasts. These pictures represent our past but they could also represent our future! When you see where the world is heading, I would be pretty pessimistic. I would like to think it’s not too late but when you see the last report of the GIEC, I have trouble seeing global warming suddenly stopping. But I guess it is still worth fighting for a better future.

If I had to pick one memorable or surprising experience, the most unique and beautiful place I visited was the abandoned mining town of Kolmanskop in Namibia. I instantly fell in love with this place and I started researching about its history. I knew nothing about it and I discovered how incredible it was: Kolmanskop is a ghost town invaded by sand and lost in the middle of the Namibian desert founded after the discovery of diamonds by German settlers in 1908. They left overnight for a new diamond. Little by little, their houses and buildings were slowly filled and covered by sand. That’s why you have those unreal and eerie images that seem to come from another world. The sand only moves a couple of inches every year so it takes ages to have this result. You realize how strong and definitive nature can be compared to ours.

"Nature doesn't need much space to thrive: give it an inch, and it will grow a mile!" That is a very nice and true quotation! I always like to give the example of Chornobyl or the border between the two Koreas to explain how nature is resilient in my interviews: Scientifics have studied and witnessed that thirty-five years after the explosion, the Chornobyl exclusion zone has become a haven for wildlife, with lynx, bison, deer and other animals roaming through thick forests. It is now the third-largest nature reserve in mainland Europe and has become an iconic experiment in rewilding. The same happened in the no-man zone in Korea: Animals and plants we thought were extinct were found there by scientific crews and are thriving there without us. But for how long? Earth can survive us, we can’t survive if we continue to destroy our planet.

My new book “Green Urbex 2: The World Without Us” was just published last week if you want to check out more of my work. There are twelve focuses on unique places with their full history! There is also the perfect introduction from the graphic novel author Mathieu Bablet, who wrote “Shangri-la” or “Carbone & Silicium”. His ecological and environmental work always struck me as being close to the message I want to convey with my images. You will find inside more than two hundred new photographs from the last ten years.