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As promised, I revisited the site to complete the exploration and take some high-resolution photos of the strange yet lovely windows with my new-ish camera.
The building looked more damaged. I walked in dressed in black with a photographer's vest, a tripod, two cameras, a backpack and a camera bag. I started shooting details when I heard the voices. There were at least two people already in there, and weren't trying to be quiet. A thing like that spoils the moment for me -- I can't shoot with people around me. If they were taggers, they sounded older than the average age. I assumed they were looting fixtures (or worse). For a moment I thought I'd stay and shoot anyway. Thankfully I'm a professional paranoid, and I'd rather photograph alone and relaxed than with an unknown number of strangers around me. So I left, and visited a new site instead.
That was on the second of January. A week later, I returned. I avoided weekdays because there's a new building site right next door. This time round, the site was quiet (it was early in the morning, though).
Shock: scavengers had half-demolished the building to nick the few bits of machinery that were left over in the basement. There were gaping holes in walls, the lovingly decorated iron doors were missing, and taggers had covered every wall with what can only be described as crap -- and I'm being nice. Their 'art' included the fantastically textured wall with the windows, both inside and out. It almost drove me to tears, and I actually said 'oh, you f*cking bitches' out loud.
This ruined the visit for me yet again. I managed to shoot the second floor, which was the downstairs part of apartment B (the one with the external stairs, which led to its main entrance). I also managed to infiltrate the basement to shoot a bit there. I'm considering going again to shoot a few rolls of film in the mostly naked machine room. There are enough pipes and valves and pumps and things to make interesting photos.
And this time, I went back to the 'library' and collected a memento from the stack of Sixties leaflets. It's the brown 'Greece - Israel' booklet I'd photographed last time, dated mid Sixties. I figure the building isn't going to be around for long, and no-one's going to miss a little booklet that must have been lying on that floor for 40 years.
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