Under our feet, on the streets we walk every day exists a world that only a few human eyes will ever see. Vast caverns of building support plants and drainage systems for city streets. Abandoned factories and other industrial age structures left to crumble with the seasons.
Toronto’s own Brickworks and Canada Malting plant are two of the most easily accessible and popular destinations for budding urban explorers. Photo groups popular with Toronto photographers regularly see explorations of the Brickworks, night and day, inside and out.
One of the most well known explorers, based here in Toronto, is Michael Cook. He runs the vanishingpoint.ca, a site devoted to photos and stories about the sewers and abandoned buildings of Southern Ontario’s major cities and other places around the world. If you read nothing else on this site, be sure to look at the Niagara Falls tailrace story.
To anyone familiar with urban exploration all this is old news. What is new and interesting however is an extensive interview with Cook that was posted today on the BLDG Blog. More than just a talk about the actual act of exploring drains, Cook gets into the relationship between drains and the natural water systems that existed before them, sickness aquired while underground and legal issues around explorations.
Also, if you are really into the amazing photos that come from the often surreal underground landscape, try and get your hands on a book called Deep Inside. It’s filled with photos of the underside of Japan that seem straight out of a sci-fi movie. Read about the book on PingMag.
