Follow My Tracks

I arrived back last night to the little cardboard envelope from Peak Imaging. My Belgium films were back!

They came out really well and I cant wait to get them into the dark room.

Watch this space

I shot a roll of film on Sunday. I had done the search for camera batteries over the weekend (I had to go to Maplins *shudder*) and now the X-700 and ETRS were up and running again. It had been a long day yesterday and on my way out in the evening I wanted to drop this film in on an hour process in the hope that I might get some interesting prints back for Absence & Presence. I dashed across town to one of the few places I knew and got it in through the door.

I went for a coffee. A latte – with too much sugar.

I went back to collect the film. The man behind the counter was holding it up to the light. You could see straight through most of it. My 36 exposures of HP5 yeilded nothing. I must get a project book and slip a slice of it it. Absence of anything, absence of the photos that were taken in a place that commanded presence. If I were to make prints from these, I’d have sheets of black, empty, photograpic paper. That might be an idea in itself.

Oh to be able to use my digital prints

I will have to put a cheap roll of colour through the X-700 just to check that its not a fault with the camera and square the inability to take the pictures solidly on my shoulder. Its a shame that the camera doesn’t handle exposures longer than 1 second. The whole experience has my eyeing up an EOS 1.

On a more possitive note, the 7 rolls of film from Belgium have arrived this morning and I will have a look through them this evening. Fingers crossed they came out better than their more recent cousin.

I was there early. So early that the car park was still closed and I had to wait for the ranger to come and open.

“Do you want in there?” he asked, knodding to the car park.

“Yes mate.”

He opened the gate and  I parked up. There had been a low mist across the fields on the way. The morning was crisp but terribly cold. I sat in the car in my jacket until I was warm and then set out with my tripod and two cameras. Absence -Presnece had to be shot on film and there were scenes that I had already taken in digital but had to try and take them again on film. I have the Minolta X-700 loaded in my bag with a roll of HP5 and the nifty 50mm prime lens on. The MKII was charged and ready.

I locked the car and bundled through the hedge to the hole in the fence. Up the path to the same door as my last visit. I was in. Things had moved. Small things and big things. Things that I dont think you could move quietly.

I started on one side of the hospital and worked my way through the debris, taking my pictures and steadily sweeping through parts of the hospital I knew and places that I had never seen. The place had seemed to open up and slowly unfold, revealing more secrets to its visitors.

You can only explore for so long before the fatigue sets in. I had shot my pictures on film and taken more digital images than I cared to think about. I had seen the dentists, complete with ancient and mouldy mouth casts for probably long dead people and long tiled coridoors that I had not walked before. Seeing the hospital so open and so quiet it felt like I had slipped into a dream (or a nightmare) where one might wonder the corridoors for an eternity. Only a window between you and the outside world but no way out.

Packing my things I made back for the car. I had a feeling that this would be my last big trip to this place. I felt that the would never be another day with such light and peace.

The first day at but Uni is nearly over and it’s been intense. The important piece of news is that I have my first project: Absence – Presence. It really excites me and I feel that the project will slot really well into my current body of work.

The key facts are:

-5 – 7 Fibre Based Prints

-Shot on Black and White film

-Hand Printed.

Here we go

Game On!

This was the last stop and was the most public, most obvious, most likely to fail of all those that we had been to. The Old Vetinary College is a stunning set of buildings in the middle of busy Brussels. The problem is many of them have already been redeveloped into luxury flats.

We slipped through the open gates and onto the large gravel drive, trying our hardest to look casual in what we were doing. Hard as a group of six people with more cameras than you can shake a very big, many branched, stick at. The access was a series of open hatches that would drop us straight into the basement.

We walked around the herras fence and were spotted by someone who looked somewhere between security and concerned member of the public. We politely explained we simply wanted to take some photos and that we had no intention of going into the building.

He left. We lost a group member who wasn’t feeling the love.

Then in two small groups we went in. The first group crossed the gravel – blink -and they were gone. We waited. Give them time to get in and get out the way. River Monkey and Stat were in. Goblin Merchant, Winch and your very own Tigger half strolled and half ran in the same direction. We found a hatch with a ladder and we were down in the musky dark.

Torches on. There was only one room that we had come to see and that was full of pickled animals and various organs. We followed the sounds of the others and came upon it. The room, a hideous museum to Vetinary science. A whole cat with its eyes removed lay in an open topped glass box, its eyes removed and its mouth fixed into a hideous snarl. We examined the jars for a while and decided it was time to make a quick exit.

Up the ladder and out the gate, slipping back to the cars before anyone could stop us. The Urbex part of the trip was over. All that was left was the long drive home.