SEWER 06 / GERMANY
this one is still under construction, i have passed the construction site for over a year now. and have witnessed how it was crawling from streetcorner to streetcorner. a huge machine and a lot of workers are still keeping the tunneling on. when i first saw some shafts open and not sealed wit concrete anymore i hadn't any equipment with me exept a camera, wich is sometimes not bad ...because in "easy" terrains it is possible (and fun) just to see hwat the camera flashlight illuminates. but here i was sure to get wet feet and maybe get lost in torrents of human waste....no thanks.
anyway,the first three pictures were taken on my first visit, and especially the last one(with the metal railing) gave me the impression of dicovering a secret underworld spa.
climbing in the sewer some days later, was a very good thing to to, even though i was super tired i spend several hours in there..it was interssting to see this brand new structure down there, only the steps of the ladder were rusted everything else was made of rustfree metal ,red bricks or grey plastic. the klimate was very damp and humid of curse ,so it was nearly imposible to make decent pictures, because my autofocus went crazy, especially when i tried timer shots with myself in the frame. the pipe is made of six meters concrete elements covered with grey plastic from the inside and connected with the same material (meltet together) each connection was numbered and handsigned with a date and name. ...the level of water in the still not in use pipe varied from some drops to kneedeep.
when i walked throug the tunnel i saw on one of the elements some ripped off posters, only the ducttape was still there. but on the remaining corners i could identify two workersunion posters wich might have been putted up because of the strike wich was going on lately. but this is a very strange place to spread propaganda, i think.
some of the entrance shafs were still under construction, and the pipe blocked by wooden panels, wich looked like easy to jump baricades, but it wasn't that easy because eveything was slippy and i tried to avoid making noise. there was of course a intense reverb and especially the cars hitting the lids on the street sounded like explosions.
on one part i found a constrution plan with detailed informations on the technical structure of the system and an unfinished entrance (without ladder). on other parts were little towers wich contained somekind of junctions to smaller parts of the sewer system. the part i had access to was L-shaped and several kilometers long. strange to me was the klimate change during the passage from rather warm to pretty cold areas, on some parts was even condensed water dripping from above. and when the echo from the sounds i made by stepping through the water i already heard the end of the tunnel long before i saw it. it was sealed with a concrete wall just like i saw them from the outside, when i was checking the construction sites for an entrance. when i walked back i saw my own traces of course ,but was surprised by their sharp underwater presence. in the other direction i came to an open end of the tunnel, wich lead to a square metalshielded hole with water pon the ground in the middle of a great traffic junction.
NHL PICTURE ARCHIVE
NEW HOMES LOST
guestbook
contact
