Last week, I was in the most ugliest town of the world - atleast.. If I had to believe the article from "De Volkskrant" (Dutch Newspaper) that my teachers handed out. We were on a AKI fieldtrip for a week, spending most of our days in Charlerois - a medium sized city that is half an hour away from Brussels. It once was famous for its blooming industry, mostly coal mining and steel processing, wich is now the past. Today most factory's are closed and gone - and so its glory. Noticable for this city is the largest European mining disaster ever, that took place in the 60's. A 930 Meter mineshaft collapsed, and 262 people died, mostly Italian Immigrants. This started a whole range of problems in the city. Poverty and crimerates are skyhigh today. Corrupt mayors, Maffia and the horrors of Mark Doutroux are other "Highlights". This city is so shitty that it doesnt even have a hotel, so we stayed in Namour, a slightly better place 30 mins from Charlerois.
And no wonder that there is no (decent) Hotel in Charlerois - the newspaper wasnt lying that its really ugly. When you are traveling from Liege (wich is already a very depressing and dirty town) things get less and less. Big factorys are marking the hilly landscape, and the small towns have grey and brown brick building that show no sign of life. When you look trough the windows, must interoirs are chaos and crap....and once you are in Charlreois, it feels like the end of the world.
Most houses in town are covered with thick black dirt - that comes from constant coal particles that where in the air when the factorys and mines were still operating. But still - after a day in town your hands are dirty. The city is also marked by its strange design. Downtown is enclosed by a big car-viaduct, and on all the edges of the center are gigantic Factorys.
The big industry areas, that cover a large part of the city, feel like a nuclear wasteland. Its not hard to gain access - a simple 3 foot high fence marks the border between street and industry zone. And all the doors of the abandond factorys are open....Wich made it very tempting to just shoot "Ruin Porn" all day - If you know what i mean. The plants were very impressive, and made you really feel like you were in Chernobyl.
However, I only had two and a half days to shoot...so I decided to spend most of the first day in the suburbs of Charlerois. Later on I went to one of the biggest steel plants in town, wich was very impressive. But yeah...i found it very hard to shoot pictures that were not so obvious. The second day we traveled to a lot of smaller places, mostly visiting museums. We also stopped in a very small village called "Spy" where we just dropped in for an hour (30 students with a camera) and just took over the town.
On Thursday we visited the - surprisingly good - Photomuseum of Charleois. They had a very interesting collection actually, with a lot of big names like Arbus and DiCorcia. It was a very pleasant and modern museum - very different then the rest of town.
And the AKI wouldnt be the AKI if there were some random moments - thanks to our teachers . They partied just as hard as the students did - or so it seemed. Results were Delayed field trips because most teachers were so wasted that they had no clue where to go and what to do (but had giant hangovers for sure)...Forgot all the mobile darkroom equipment (We were suposed to develop all our film every night ). .. promised to suply enough film for the week... but sold out the very first day, etc.etc etc.
But most random was the map that we got handed out (So we wouldnt get lost in Charlerois...)It was an A4 copy of the newspaper article that contained a little map - with almost no streetnames or anything usefull on it. Just some marks with pictures.
So seriously, if the average citizen in Charleois refuses to (or just doenst )speak English - you only have your newspaper illustration and the 5 words of french you remembered from highschool to get yourself back to the hostel..... Hiep hoi...
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