One of the scariest shoots I went to in London. Breaking into an abandoned building, stepping over broken stairs, peering at the first floor and seeing the light shed in from the ceiling.
It was a sketchy website, where we met, but I was brand new, everything was a little sketchy. We met at the London Bridge Station. A busy station in a busy part of town, I told myself if I got the sixth sense to run, I would do it.
We met. I was easy to spot, the girl with the suitcase in heels, black curls and a bag full of lingerie. He was a personal trainer, so obviously in shape, and with gear.
We begin to walk away from the station. We walk past the buildings, streets go by, quickly. I notice less and less buildings in each block, less people crossing our path. The pavement opens up to rotting land, and once vibrant buildings on our path are now desolate, fewer and farther between and condemned.
We stop by a condemned building. The grass outside is rotting, the chained fence is locked, as you would expect to see in a horror film, chains and all. He says, "My friend bought this place, I have the key, we'll shoot here." In his thick, charming accent he assured me, "I love shooting beauty amid destruction. It'll be great".
After a few tries with the key, he claimed the locks had been changed. He acted surprised and muscled my bag over the fence in one quick motion. I was in it now, I mean, my What Katie Did lingerie was in that bag. I wasn't running without it!
I, as gracefully as I could, climbed over the fence in my bordellos. All the while, thinking of all the self defense moves I knew to protect myself. I followed him to the main door, where of course, he had to work with the door jam quite a while before it just busted open.
It was cold, and there was a draft. Pools of light spilled onto the dirty, dust caked floor from the celling. Wood was missing from all four floors of the building, allowing for the sun to just dart right in. I could have imagined it, I didn't see one per say, but I am convinced I heard bats or birds..or something! The smell was just awful. It smelled like death, rotting wood and dust. So much dust.
The door closed behind me and I thought about running, again. Instead, I followed him up the broken stair case, carefully placing my heels between broken wood. We traveled to the third floor, which had the most floor left. It was by far the safest floor.. I wondered how fast I could really run down the stairs if I found myself in some sort of trouble. My mind raced, but I continued.
As I changed and we began to shoot, I relaxed a little, my fear subsided. I thought, I'm at least going to get some damn good photos for this journey. He ended up, obviously, being just fine to work with. His accent was sweet, his shots were fun to create and we shared good laughs, stories and a lot of coughs though out the day.
He sent me these images a few weeks later, while I was still in bed with a terrible cough, from this location, of course! So I was left with these photos, my image in a building that probably doesn't even exist anymore. It was just for that moment in time, bare, the way no one was supposed to see it, but now it's captured forever.
