There's a genre of urban photography that involves living quite dangerously.. photographing abandoned bulidings, castles, train graveyards, which often times involve tresspassing, guard dogs, even the threat of being shot!? So since I don't live so dangerously (you've seen my cute kids, right?!) :) more my speed was visiting the urban ghost town of Doel, Belgium, near the Dutch border. I'd read about it online and it's been on my to-do list for quite some time. Enter a 1/2 day free a couple of weeks back with blue skies, and voila! Safe urban photography hunting we went!
Doel is just about 20 minutes north of Antwerp and 5 min from the Netherlands. After Antwerp, we weaved our way thru the HUGE Antwerp ship channel and finally, made it to Doel.
Here's the history in a nutshell:
Doel was first documented in 1267 and until the 18thc was an island, surrounded by purposefully flooded land. It still boasts the oldest stone windmill in Belgium (we had a tasty snack down below!) and in 2008, was set to be demolished in order for the port of Antwerp to swallow it. Enter 200 very fiesty residents and some riot police and 7 years later, the town is still hanging on by a thread (minus about 190 residents I think??). But what draws people these days to the dilapidated village are the scores of abandoned buildings that have been tagged by grafitti artists. It really is something to see! A great place for a photo shoot on a sunny day!
Here's some of my faves:
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