Metro New York
Thurs Oct 7, 2010
"What Lies Beneath" - Metro New York, Thurs Oct 7
"What Lies Beneath: Uncovering NYC's Lost Underground"
Metro New York
Thurs Oct 7, 2010
Metro New York
Thurs Oct 7, 2010
Article on Underground London
Online article about underground London and its lost rivers
http://www.qmsu.org/news/article/7681/240/
http://www.qmsu.org/news/article/7681/240/
"Exploring Sewers" - Arcade 29.1
"Exploring Sewers"
Article and photos by me published in Arcade 29.1, Fall 2010
Link to the article text, without the pictures, is here
Article and photos by me published in Arcade 29.1, Fall 2010
Link to the article text, without the pictures, is here
"City of Light, City of Darkness" - Slideshow Thursday July 15 at Flux Factory, Queens
XXXXX THURSDAY, JULY 15 XXXXX
City of Light, City of Darkness: Panel on the Paris Underground
As part of Flux Factory's Going Places (Doing Stuff) III, urban explorers Moses Gates and Steve Duncan will present adventures from far-off Paris. Though it's known as the City of Light, there are 170 miles of absolute darkness that exist under the city -- a network of limestone quarries dotted with WWII bunkers, ossuaries, unofficial art galleries, and other assorted surprises colloquially known as the Catacombs. It is home to a subculture of people of all ages, interests, and nationalities who make a hobby of exploring and utilizing these and other hidden spaces throughout Paris -- the Cataphiles.
Moses Gates and Steve Duncan will be covering the history, culture, and structures of this underground world in a slideshow presentation, as well as explaining how you, too, can become a Cataphile.
Flux Factory
39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, Queens
8p; $free
City of Light, City of Darkness: Panel on the Paris Underground
As part of Flux Factory's Going Places (Doing Stuff) III, urban explorers Moses Gates and Steve Duncan will present adventures from far-off Paris. Though it's known as the City of Light, there are 170 miles of absolute darkness that exist under the city -- a network of limestone quarries dotted with WWII bunkers, ossuaries, unofficial art galleries, and other assorted surprises colloquially known as the Catacombs. It is home to a subculture of people of all ages, interests, and nationalities who make a hobby of exploring and utilizing these and other hidden spaces throughout Paris -- the Cataphiles.
Moses Gates and Steve Duncan will be covering the history, culture, and structures of this underground world in a slideshow presentation, as well as explaining how you, too, can become a Cataphile.
Flux Factory
39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, Queens
8p; $free
Email of the day - Sewer hazards
Tomasz Kupiecki to steve
Jun 2
Hi Steve!
Your site is very interesting, it`s a good job. I`m Tom, sewer worker from Warsaw, Poland. Photos of London sewers were so familiar- we`ve got sewer net projected by Wiliam Lindley about 1880`s.
I wanna warn you- sewer can be a deadly trap, because of poisonus gases, poor oxygene atmosphere, explosive gases, fast rising level of water, so please, be very, very carefull.
For example I was a victim of explosive gases, in Poland work is still „in oldschool style”- rubber waders, coats, gas masks, tripods from communism era, etc. So- I put my black rubber chest waders and went to manhole. I wade about 30 meters from there in knee deep sludge, to check condition of sewer line (high about 1,9m, wide aobut 3m)... So I was wading, and suddenly I heard somethig like thunderclap, and a mighty force thrown me back, to the manhole. I feel very high temperature, I was knocked down and all covered by sewer sludge... Waders were filled by this... I was trying to keep head above it... My co-workers on the surface were yeling: Tom what is it? I babbled: for God`s sake, pull me out from here, and I fainted. The cause of explosion was someones fag putted to the manhole... Before I was taken to hospital, rescuers had to clean me and remove from me waders filled sludge... In hospital I was all in gypsum costume about half year.
So, please- be very, very carefull.
Best wishes, and sorry for my English, Tom from Warsaw.
I emailed him back and mentioned that I usually carry a gas meter that checks for explosive/flammable gases as well as for hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide, but that I don't currently have a working oxygen meter. He sent this diagram and explanation for helping avoid low-oxygen atmospheres:
Greg Brotherton's sculpture
Aawesome sculpture from Greg Brotherton - "Sewer Man," inspired in part by one of my pictures from the underground Park River in Hartfard, CT....
Columbia Magazine - "The Night Hunter"
Columbia Magazine, Spring 2010
Cover Story:
The Night Hunter
By Paul Hond
"Urban explorer and photographer Steve Duncan approaches history from a different perspective."
http://magazine.columbia.edu/features/spring-2010/night-hunter
Cover Story:
The Night Hunter
By Paul Hond
"Urban explorer and photographer Steve Duncan approaches history from a different perspective."
http://magazine.columbia.edu/features/spring-2010/night-hunter
Underground London Rivers - in Croatian!
From VelikaBritanija.net: All Things British, in Croation
"Zaboravljene rijeke"
Piše: Vjeran Stojanac , 01. 04. 2010.
http://www.velikabritanija.net/2010/04/01/zaboravljene-rijeke-london/
"Zaboravljene rijeke"
Piše: Vjeran Stojanac , 01. 04. 2010.
http://www.velikabritanija.net/2010/04/01/zaboravljene-rijeke-london/
I think T.S. Eliot had an urban explorer's sense of history and the past. A couple lines from "Little Gidding" (Number 4 of "Four Quartets"):
...History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern....
...What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning...
...We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Sven Johne
A while back I was contacted by a Sven Johne, a German conceptual photographer, who wanted to integrate my work into a project. I didn't know what a "conceptual photographer" was but the more I found out about his work, the more I liked it. The end result is here: http://www.svenjohne.de/svenjohne_work_nytunnel.html
Slideshow Jan 15, 2010, in Riverside, CA (Near UC Riverside)
Slideshow Jan 15, 2010 at Shutterstories in Riverside; Photos on Exhibit through April 2010
On Friday January 15th I'll be doing my first slideshow/presentation in Riverside, CA. Many thanks to Terry and Melissa Tippie for the chance to do it at their gallery.
This is also my first chance to show pictures from my trip to Eastern Europe this past summer! Amazing tunnels and excellent adventures in Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. You can see some samples on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=one_set72157622892006485
Details:
January 15, 2010
At Shutterstories (gallery/studio space), 981 Iowa Ave., Riverside CA 92507
Doors open at 7pm, come and have a drink or a snack
I start showing pictures at 8pm.
Generally these run about 45 minutes of me presenting, plus time afterwards for questions.
On Friday January 15th I'll be doing my first slideshow/presentation in Riverside, CA. Many thanks to Terry and Melissa Tippie for the chance to do it at their gallery.
This is also my first chance to show pictures from my trip to Eastern Europe this past summer! Amazing tunnels and excellent adventures in Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. You can see some samples on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=one_set72157622892006485
Details:
January 15, 2010
At Shutterstories (gallery/studio space), 981 Iowa Ave., Riverside CA 92507
Doors open at 7pm, come and have a drink or a snack
I start showing pictures at 8pm.
Generally these run about 45 minutes of me presenting, plus time afterwards for questions.
One Case silent auction by Resource Magazine
Four of my prints are being offered as part of the One Case silent auction in New York, organized by Resource Magazine, which will take place January 7th 2009 night at Milk Gallery (450 W.15th St. NYC)
Catalog: http://issuu.com/resourcemagonline/docs/onecase.
Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=228369978620&index=1
Catalog: http://issuu.com/resourcemagonline/docs/onecase.
Facebook event page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=228369978620&index=1
Photo on cover of novel "My Dead Body"
The recently-published horror/mystery novel My Dead Body features one of my photos from underneath London as part of the cover art:
Creative Time Video
A short video about me, shot and produced by Howard Silver for Creative Time, is here:http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2009/cttv/?p=138
urbanautica.com - "Memories from the Underground"
Some of my photos are being shown on the excellent photography site Urbanautica.com.
On the website: http://www.urbanautica.com/blog/steve-duncan/ (In Italian by default, but you can change to English)
Via Facebook feed: http://www.facebook.com/pages/
On the website: http://www.urbanautica.com/blog/steve-duncan/ (In Italian by default, but you can change to English)
Via Facebook feed: http://www.facebook.com/pages/
"An Urban Spelunker Pursues His Vision"
http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/livewire/archived/an_urban_spelun/
by Ryann Liebenthal
An Urban Spelunker Pursues His Vision
It’s 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and Steve Duncan is scrambling. The 30-year-old mapmaker, freelance photographer and self-described urban historian has had a particularly busy week, which has taken him from the train tunnels of Manhattan to an underground river in Yonkers, then back to his alma mater, Columbia University, to shoot photos for a university event.
So he’s running late framing pictures for a show his work is in at a New York gallery. His contributions to the series, “Night Moves,” consist of after-hours shots from some of the most remote parts of New York City—stunning views from the top of the Manhattan Bridge, eerie glimpses into sewer tunnels beneath the city streets.
Duncan is supposed to be at the gallery by 4 to drop off his prints. But as the minutes tick by, it becomes increasingly clear he’s not going to make it.
“I’m not usually this bad at this,” he said, looking up from his work. He paused. “Well, that’s sort of a lie.”
Lately, Duncan has lost interest in his map business — and not just because the mapmaking industry, like other tourist-based markets, has suffered in this dire economic climate. Instead, he is more interested in his tunnel explorations, a mostly unprofitable hobby he’s been cultivating since he started at Columbia—where he majored in urban studies—in 1996.
“I had heard that there were these tunnels under the university, and I was fascinated,” he said. But it was an academic emergency that finally led him underground.
“I was procrastinating as usual in this math class I had,” he recalled, “and it turned out there was a big set of stuff that could only be done using programs on computers in the math building.”
It was 11 p.m. The math building had closed at 9.
He convinced another student to take him into a subterranean passageway leading to the math building. “So then he led me into the tunnels,” he said, “and kind of pointed me in the right direction. And then I found myself alone in the tunnels, which was terrifying—exhilarating also, but really scary.”
Then he just kept going.
Duncan’s friend Jacob Press remembers the time Duncan spent eight hours getting into a tunnel by digging through a concrete wall, with a shovel he’d found on the street.
“I’m a little squeamish about tunnels and stuff,” Press admitted. “I never caught on when you started going down those Amtrak tunnels.”
Surprisingly, Duncan said it was his lifelong fear of the dark—“not just the dark per se, but a fear of things jumping out at me”— that drove his desire to go underground.
“Actually I kind of lost the whole fear of the dark thing after a while of going around tunnels, and I was sad,” he lamented. “I lost that sense of going into something…that sense of discovery that I had at first, and that I really loved.”
His expertise was recognized when he worked as an on-air urban historian for a truncated Discovery Channel series called “Urban Explorers.” Five episodes – about Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver and Milwaukee – ran in 2004 and 2005.
Duncan relies on freelance assignments and income from Opus Publishing, which he runs with partner Arthur Gorelik. The two founded the company in 2002, after noticing a significant gap in the map market.
“A lot of big map publishers had taken a long time to adapt digital files for cartography,” he said. Working with digital data, Opus could update maps much more quickly.
This kind of frenetic, can-do spirit seems to characterize Duncan’s approach to work and life. After dropping his prints off just before 5 p.m., he climbed into his Mazda Accent, and began what at first seemed like a meandering ride back to the office. But then he abruptly stopped the car, and ambled over to a sewer grate in the middle of the street.
He’d been down this tunnel before, he said, looking down.
As he waited for a car to pass, he turned and began describing the histories of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, both visible in the waning glow of late afternoon light.
“It’s not so much that I’m a good historian,” he said, “it’s just that it doesn’t really matter how good a historian you are if you’re not communicating it.”
He knelt down and shoved his flashlight through one of the round holes of the sewer grate. He put his eye right up to the grate and peered down into the tunnel, pointing out the flowing river down below.
“And you can smell it too,” he said, hopping back up, his eyes alighting on a sewage construction project down the street.
by Ryann Liebenthal
An Urban Spelunker Pursues His Vision
An underground break-in for the sake of a math assignment led Steve Duncan to the Discovery Channel and a gallery show -- and maybe a new career
ryann.liebenthal@gmail.comIt’s 2 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and Steve Duncan is scrambling. The 30-year-old mapmaker, freelance photographer and self-described urban historian has had a particularly busy week, which has taken him from the train tunnels of Manhattan to an underground river in Yonkers, then back to his alma mater, Columbia University, to shoot photos for a university event.So he’s running late framing pictures for a show his work is in at a New York gallery. His contributions to the series, “Night Moves,” consist of after-hours shots from some of the most remote parts of New York City—stunning views from the top of the Manhattan Bridge, eerie glimpses into sewer tunnels beneath the city streets.
Duncan is supposed to be at the gallery by 4 to drop off his prints. But as the minutes tick by, it becomes increasingly clear he’s not going to make it.
“I’m not usually this bad at this,” he said, looking up from his work. He paused. “Well, that’s sort of a lie.”
Lately, Duncan has lost interest in his map business — and not just because the mapmaking industry, like other tourist-based markets, has suffered in this dire economic climate. Instead, he is more interested in his tunnel explorations, a mostly unprofitable hobby he’s been cultivating since he started at Columbia—where he majored in urban studies—in 1996.
“I had heard that there were these tunnels under the university, and I was fascinated,” he said. But it was an academic emergency that finally led him underground.
“I was procrastinating as usual in this math class I had,” he recalled, “and it turned out there was a big set of stuff that could only be done using programs on computers in the math building.”
It was 11 p.m. The math building had closed at 9.
He convinced another student to take him into a subterranean passageway leading to the math building. “So then he led me into the tunnels,” he said, “and kind of pointed me in the right direction. And then I found myself alone in the tunnels, which was terrifying—exhilarating also, but really scary.”
Then he just kept going.
Duncan’s friend Jacob Press remembers the time Duncan spent eight hours getting into a tunnel by digging through a concrete wall, with a shovel he’d found on the street.
“I’m a little squeamish about tunnels and stuff,” Press admitted. “I never caught on when you started going down those Amtrak tunnels.”
Surprisingly, Duncan said it was his lifelong fear of the dark—“not just the dark per se, but a fear of things jumping out at me”— that drove his desire to go underground.
“Actually I kind of lost the whole fear of the dark thing after a while of going around tunnels, and I was sad,” he lamented. “I lost that sense of going into something…that sense of discovery that I had at first, and that I really loved.”
His expertise was recognized when he worked as an on-air urban historian for a truncated Discovery Channel series called “Urban Explorers.” Five episodes – about Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Denver and Milwaukee – ran in 2004 and 2005.
Duncan relies on freelance assignments and income from Opus Publishing, which he runs with partner Arthur Gorelik. The two founded the company in 2002, after noticing a significant gap in the map market.
“A lot of big map publishers had taken a long time to adapt digital files for cartography,” he said. Working with digital data, Opus could update maps much more quickly.
This kind of frenetic, can-do spirit seems to characterize Duncan’s approach to work and life. After dropping his prints off just before 5 p.m., he climbed into his Mazda Accent, and began what at first seemed like a meandering ride back to the office. But then he abruptly stopped the car, and ambled over to a sewer grate in the middle of the street.
He’d been down this tunnel before, he said, looking down.
As he waited for a car to pass, he turned and began describing the histories of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, both visible in the waning glow of late afternoon light.
“It’s not so much that I’m a good historian,” he said, “it’s just that it doesn’t really matter how good a historian you are if you’re not communicating it.”
He knelt down and shoved his flashlight through one of the round holes of the sewer grate. He put his eye right up to the grate and peered down into the tunnel, pointing out the flowing river down below.
“And you can smell it too,” he said, hopping back up, his eyes alighting on a sewage construction project down the street.
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