It’s All About Time

Lana has been doing this urbex exploration for a while now. It has become like her second life. As she said, “it’s like a drug” for her. “At least once or twice a month. Maximum four or five nights a week. I need this process to be happy. It’s like a drug,” Lana told Vice.

How It All Started?

“Two situations in my childhood defined my future interest. At the age of 11, I found myself inside an old cement factory when I shortened my way home from my grandma’s. Then at 13, me and my mother were visiting a sanatorium in Abkhazia. Abkhazia was some years after the war: the landscape and exteriors looked fantastic; destroyed and forgotten. Houses and flats after fires, holes after shootings and explosions. Rusty and knocked-over trains, cars, trucks. All of this impressed me so much that I started to love abandonments, and after about a year I understood that a part of my soul needs them. At 16 I started to take pictures of the places that I visited,” Lana told Vice. 

Riskiest Place

Obviously, these places are risky. Just imagine yourself entering these old buildings and all you have is you and a flashlight in your hand. “I think unfinished nuclear power stations and stopped particle accelerators were the riskiest abandoned objects, because they’re sometimes guarded almost as much as active ones. Visiting some active territories is a great risk because of cameras and security alarms,” told Lana to the website Vice.

A Solo Explorer

“We explore in a group. Sometimes the group divides, and I spend a few minutes face-to-face with the decay. I prefer to explore with guys that are older than me. Some have their own families, and the exploration is a kind of shadow life for them,” told Lana. But this time she was all alone in a place more scarier than other places she has ever visited.

A Community

According to Lana, Russia has a massive urbex community spread all over the country. Every member of the community keeps themselves busy in discovering some amazing places that people have no idea of their existence. But what is the reason behind the love for these places they find now and then? “I can’t say why it’s so big. Maybe because of soviet heritage and our love to former URRS. It’s a way of connecting to our history: touching it, feeling it,” Lana told the Vice.

But Isn’t It Illegal?

“Russia is a republic of fences. Sometimes they have holes or strange finishings. Sometimes we need to find a way of opening locked doors or windows with no destructions,” replied Lana. No doubt, Lana is living the most adventurous life.