1. Urbex Session, Castle Road Trip by Marie & Raphael
The marquise has left her castle, and the beautiful abandoned residence languishes in its park overrun by brambles. Fortunately, two young urban explorers have taken on an extraordinary challenge: to bring life back to these forgotten worlds whose history, imaginary or real, evokes troubling feelings. With them, through an unusual road trip that takes them from bourgeois houses to manor houses, and from gentleman’s residences to palaces, discover incredible buildings, sometimes intact but silenced. Exceptional photos with refined aesthetics reveal the glorious past, extravagances, and mysteries of these ghost castles. These lost worlds tell the story of our society. They bear witness to the sometimes tragic fate of abandoned French heritage and raise questions about its preservation.
2. Urbex, World Heritage by MonsieurKurtis
With MonsieurKurtis, urban exploration is a journey without borders. Camera and lights slung over his shoulder, he takes us on an unusual visual journey to discover inaccessible places, whether abandoned or not. Sites closed to the public, forbidden or secret, the adventure begins in Lorraine, in his native valley, and continues around the globe. No borders either between rooftops (skyscrapers, bridges, church spires...), ground level (factories, amusement parks, junkyards...), or underground (bunkers, catacombs, mines, subways, quarries...). Inspired by video game artworks, he does not hesitate to appropriate the place by staging characters and creating fantastic or surreal atmospheres. With this book, the author forever inscribes 50 places into the world heritage of urbex, in 180 stunning photos supported by texts revealing the architectural and historical interest of the sites.
3. Urbex World by Jonk
Traveling the world in search of dreams and poetry... From the mythical ghost city of Pripyat in the Chernobyl exclusion zone to the sand-covered houses of Kolmanskop in Namibia, passing through the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Jonk, an adventurous photographer and urbex lover, takes us on a journey in this book to discover forbidden zones, ruins devoured by time where nature reclaims its rights. Prisons, train stations, palaces, military buildings—discover thirty-five sites abandoned by human society and reinvested by the dreamlike magic of abandonment.
4. Vestiges of a Forgotten World by Kieron Connolly
Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if humanity disappeared? The photographs in this book give us a glimpse. Much faster than one might imagine, grass would cover the roads, trees would pierce buildings, and wildlife would return to haunt our cities. Nature would reclaim its rights.
From the Chernobyl exclusion zone to the Aral Sea, from the ruined theaters of Detroit to British Cold War bunkers, Vestiges of a Forgotten World reveals the fascinating stories of ghost towns, flooded shopping centers, amusement parks with rusted rides, and abandoned railways. Through more than 150 spectacular and astonishing photographs, embark on a journey into the heart of these sites forgotten by mankind.
5. 100 Breathtaking Urbex Places by Eloi Rousseau
Orphanages, churches, abandoned factories, amusement parks, hospitals, cemeteries… All around the world, abandoned sites, left to nature, taken over by street artists, rediscovered by urban explorers…
This book offers 100 adventures discovering these amazing places where time seems to have stopped…
6. Urbex: 50 Secret and Abandoned Places in France by Timothy Hannem
To become an urban explorer, you just have to dare... Climb a wall, take an underground passage, push aside a simple fence, and everything changes. Forgotten and secret worlds right in the heart of the city become adventure grounds... Just steps from home. Orphanage, church, hospital, slaughterhouse, abandoned factory, amusement park, school, cemetery... these abandoned sites are being rediscovered today by urban explorers, those Urbex enthusiasts. This book offers fifty adventures, fifty secret places sometimes intact, all abandoned by human society. Clue by clue, try to locate these unusual sites where time has stopped.
7. Abandoned France by David Margaine
Follow the traces of the abandoned steelworks of Gandrange or the closed blast furnaces of Uckange in Lorraine, a spectacular warship graveyard on the Crozon peninsula in Brittany, a forgotten castle in the Paris region, an abandoned sanatorium in the Alps, the remains of a magnificent Art Deco concert hall in the North, a disused hospital in the Southwest, a now forbidden military fort in the Pyrenees, a closed wine cellar in Normandy...
8. Chernobyl: Post-Apocalyptic Visit by Laurent Michelot
April 26, 1986. The Chernobyl disaster destroyed many lives, a city, villages, and a region in just a few hours. It is both an ecological and human catastrophe, which will remain engraved in collective memory and whose scars will take more than nine hundred years to possibly disappear.
Through an introduction richly illustrated with infographics and period photographs, this book sheds light, for the first time, on the utopian city of Pripyat and the Chernobyl complex, the fatal accident, and the attempts to contain the disaster.
Detailed maps of the area allow exploration of the city, its infrastructure, its homes, as well as the surrounding villages.
Archive photographs contrast the present and the past, like snapshots, fragments of the lives of the men and women who once lived there.
Laurent Michelot, a passionate photographer, explores through 150 never-before-seen photographs these now abandoned places.
9. Baikonur: Remnants of the Soviet program
The world is full of very little-known geographical anomalies that are or have often been a source of diplomatic and/or military struggles. Many still exist under the radar and are, or could become, the source of a major international crisis.
Countries that do not really exist, the world's only town that lies entirely underground, a UK hotel room that became Yugoslavian for one day only, an island which is Spanish for six months of the year and French for the other six months, a city which is officially constituted by one single skyscraper, the world's first and only railway that belonged to one country and ran across another, a hotel room whose bedroom is in France and whose bathroom is in Switzerland, Bir Tawil which is one of the very few territories on Earth not claimed by any country, the only place in the world where you can find the so-called counter-enclaves and where in a 20-minute walk around the village you can cross an international border over 50 times at 50 different points...
10. Abandoned places: Images of a lost world by Henk van Rensbergen
Henk van Rensbergen is an airline pilot. He takes advantage of his stopovers around the world to pursue his second passion: photographing abandoned places. From a floating warship graveyard in France to a flooded theme park in New Orleans, passing through a sanatorium in Georgia, a forgotten love hotel in Japan, or a palace on an Italian lake, the author seeks the beauty of their desolation and highlights the richness of their decay. This pocket-sized book showcases his most iconic photos from the past 25 years of about a hundred different locations, including unpublished documents and anecdotes.
