URBEX STORIES
Dehydrated squid and nude male urbex photography with Brian Henry
Pic curtesy of Brian Henry brianhenryyy.com
In the very early days of my “urbex career” I was still trying to figure out what my style should be. I experimented with beauty in decay a bit taking pictures of my gf, models or my female friends. It was alright and fun and having someone to chat to while exploring was always cool. However, I had to realize my shortcomings when it comes to snapping pics of humans and since I’m not a photographer (I like to describe myself as en explorer with a camera) I quickly suspended this activity and focused on buildings and abandoned places (if you follow my instagram, yes there were some hilarious comebacks from time to time ๐).
At the beginning I tried the whole “model thing” (beauty in decay) but it wasn’t for me. I rather focus on the places itself.
However, this Baltimore-based explorer Brian Henry appeared on my radar just recently and his “experimental art photography” intrigued me. Looking at his instagram feed I saw ghost-like pictures of nude males in abandoned places. I was a bit shocked but mostly surprised to see nude men in urbex photography as a balance to well established and popular female counterpart. I wasn’t used to seeing male genitalia out in the open in bandos before. Good for you – I thought. But mostly, I liked the disappearing, ghostly style and since it was new (to me) and unique I had to invite Brian on the pod.
Taking nude self-portraits began in 2008 for Brian and it was originally an art project. I got hooked to it. There was a magazine that was strictly Polaroid nude art photography. They were looking for male contributors and at the time I was only shooting empty abandoned spaces on Polaroid film and I was thinking to myself “Okey, I can get naked for this magazine but it will be in the places I find comfortable shooting”. He recalls his first shoot being during the winter. Freezing your balls off is what comes to my mind. From that shoot onwards it became something else to do while also exploring abandoned places – he recalls. Brian noticed a majority of explorers were visiting similar places and taking identical pictures. Despite loving exploring those locations he found it a tad boring and he wanted to try something new: an illusion of a ghost in bandos (since coming across one is impossible – ghost don’t exist). Interestingly, he also is of an opinion that Instagram ruined exploring. Ever since people started posting pictures it accelerated the deterioration of places just because people follow each other, they see one picture, assume there is someone there and it’s wide open and everyone is like “Let’s hurry up and go there before it gets trashed”. Having said that, I don’t feel like I’m part of the community as I haven’t been as active as I used to be. Nowadays it’s just me and my dog exploring together. You can’t blame him for trying something else, can you?
How does he do that with a Polaroid? Only ghost knows.
However, there is more to Brian then naked pictures of disappearing ghostly-like men in bandos – there is also a dehydrated squid (outside US called dried squid)! [insert long pause to process] I went through dehydrated squid phase. I think at some stage I was known as the “squid guy” – he says. Yes, I know. Dehydrated squid? ๐คทโโ๏ธ What is that unique phenomena? Our all-American explorer (actually he is half-Polish – his mum to blame for that) used to leave dried squids hanging from the ceiling in abandoned buildings all over the Maryland state. What a little smelly surprise to come across while exploring, eh? There was this one time – he recalls – vultures were swirling above his head after smelling the dead dried squid. How lovely ๐
Famous squid ๐ฆ ๐ Polaroid pictures by Brain Henry
Before you call him mental… it’s art okey? And art is… well, what you can get away with I suppose. There is much more to the squid story than what I told you but I will let you listen to the episode for more details. Brian also mentioned different stories, one when he came across a LARPING event while driving in the evening trying to find accommodation for the night. He also explored outside US. He went to Balkans where in Bosnia he explored abandoned shopping mall and found fragments of human bones! It made him reflect on how certain places become abandoned – in America it is mostly due to financial issues or neglect but in other places, like in Bosnia, it was due to war and bombing.
Ghosts do exist! (In Brain Henry’s pictures)
He also went exploring in Poland – following his ancestors family tree, Sweden – where he set up an alarm and woke up the whole village from a deep winter sleep. In 2011 Brian went to Chernobyl in Ukraine for a little one-day escapade to abandoned city of Pripyat. When his episode comes out on Chasing Bandos podcast he will be exploring on a chilly Iceland. Wonder what is he going to find there besides that one abandoned plane, hmm ๐ง
Anyway, full episode here:
Social media: brianhenryyy.com (website), brianhenryyy (Instagram)