He’s a firefighter from Goes, and he has a really cool hobby. 49 year old Andre Joosse is the man behind solo project Urbex.nl. All images on the website are in fact his, and with 637 individual highlights, it is clear that Joosse hasn’t sat still. “As a child, I always had an interest in industrial photography. Ever since my first visit to an abandoned shipyard near my home, the adrenaline rush didn’t stop. Almost weekly I pack my camera gear to get out and visit the abandoned world. One of the things I try to capture is the beauty of decay. The best is when the buildings still contain memories of the past, like old machines, or documents.” Nowadays his website attracts 100.000 visitors each month.

Joosse started publishing his urbex photography in 2004. Back then he published mainly on his personal website AndreJoosse.nl, but after acquisitioning the domain urbex.nl in 2006, he could dedicate a website solely to urban exploring. “Best of all are the locations that really breathe another time, like old Soviet buildings in East-Germany (...) Forst Zinna is an old Soviet base near Berlin, with many murals, gyms, and abandoned military gear”. Joosse kindly provided me with a link to his section for Forst Zinna. The description came to life through the images. Red corridors, athletic figures on the walls, cyrillic texts, in paint that is peeling off the walls. A ripped out front cover of Pravda magazine (one of the oldest and  biggest newspapers in the USSR) is still glued to the wall, on which faces of 16 scientists and artists are printed in black and white.
Gas masks are left in the dirt.

“I’m never aware of the stories that underlie each ruin, I only do research after my visits. The most baffling location was Kent School. It was only later that I found out that the Nazi’s used this building for their race purification programme. Many disabled children were exterminated there. It gives the location a totally different energy.”

A map of Europe gets really messy when you add 637 pins on it. The furthest locations are in Iceland, Armenia and even Spitsbergen. Conveniently though, most locations are in former East Germany and Belgium. Joosse formally explained: “Land prices in the Netherlands are high, and most other countries with abandoned buildings are a flight away. Belgium was practical, but still has new locations. Take the totally departed steel industry in Liège for example. First it’s the behemoths that leave, later the smaller factories that depended on them.”

Do you think these buildings should be left alone?

“I find it interesting to see how the decay continues, however because of vandalism, graffiti, copper thieves, and paintball that is almost impossible. I’d rather see the buildings repurposed in that case, with respect for the original architecture. That is of course, after I visited the site.”

Are there aspects of ruins that can be valuable to an architect?

“The question is if the architect wants to imitate the ambiance, or the function of an abandoned building in a new design. The latter is usually true, with elements of a working factory being used. Of course a lot can be done with plants and greenery to accentuate the abandoned building.” On Joosse’s personal website, AndreJoosse.nl, he states a little more on the enchantment of ruins: they are places where life is seemingly erased, but yet so present. Where time has stood still, and nature has reclaimed the space.

I myself struggle to explain the enchantment of the lost, but Joosse’s own statement on his website comes close:

“Join me on a journey through Europe’s abandoned places, where each frame tells a story of forgotten lives, faded grandeur, and the inexorable passage of time. Let’s celebrate the allure of decay and the resilience of nature in our urban world.”

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All images are courtesy of Andre Joosse.