Exploring the forbidden subterranean world of ghost Tube stations, Victorian sewers and disused shelters has given academic geographer and urban explorer Bradley Garrett a whole new perspective on the city
The photography of hidden places that explorers undertake – a practice which is quickly developing its own particular aesthetic sensibility – is an attempt to create a visual mark of the present, with reference to what came before, what will come after, and how it is all connected through us. Explorations behind the scenes show us that a city is not a collection of isolated locations but a beautifully and delicately threaded tapestry of wires, pipes and rails.
I’ve experienced many incredible things tagging along on missions into the forbidden city, and as much as I might treasure memories of watching sunsets from the roofs of council blocks or waking up on top of bridges, it is undercity London that most piques my interest. The tangle of tunnels that keeps the city ticking are vast, diverse in function and undoubtedly the most difficult in the world to access, this being the city of paranoia and all.
The urban exploration crew I had worked with, the London Consolidation Crew or LCC, had long graduated from ruins and skyscrapers – it was the city in the city they were after, the secrets buried deep underground where the line between construction site and ruin is very thin indeed. The Kingsway Telephone Exchange was the crème de la crème, more coveted even than abandoned Tube stations or possibly even the forgotten Post Office railway we accessed in 2011.
When I walk the city now, I can’t help but imagine it vertically as well as horizontally. Most of the tourists walking at street level – photographing Parliament and clippers cruising the Thames – haven’t a clue that there is a snarl of tunnels underneath their feet, many of which aren’t on any map.
Perhaps it’s right that local knowledge should reside with locals; this is our city after all. We, like Campbell, are engaged citizens acutely aware of what’s going on around us and determined to partake in the conversation about what constitutes the city. Urban explorers want to know what is being built, by whom, with what funds and to what ends; they want to know what has been forgotten and left behind and how that space might be re-imagined with the public interest in mind. These expectations – like the expectation that people will explore whatever environment they happen to live in – are threaded with common sense throughout, unlike many of the policy decisions that have led to our cities increasingly become a sight to be seen rather than a place ...