Richard Vanek - Black and White Photography

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Sunday, 23rd May, 2004

Notes from 23rd May 2004
[posted at 10:00 GMT]    

Today I went to Belgium village called Doel. My friend went there few month ago to take some pictures which I saw. From that moment I was suggesting to him that I would like to go there as well. We never agreed on date so I decided to go alone today. Weather was rather changing but I was planning for it for few days already so I said today I go in any case.
I passed Antwerp and went by Ring two around harbor. I need to pay for tunnels and than I need to go across industrial zone. It was not really nice road to village. You know what is so special about it? This village (I only heard this) was kind of force to abandon. People where more or less forced to leave (I understand that the reason was extending harbor of Antwerp) and therefore you can find empty houses and lot of protesting words on walls. But what I have found wasn't that terrible. There were still quite a people living. Yes few houses were empty, hotels and restaurants as well (some still looks running), police office empty. On the other hand church in great shape.
So as I was approaching I was wondering do anybody want to live in this village anyway? If you consider this access through industrial zone. Channel on next side and. That shocked me the most, nuclear power plan from other side, just about 500 meters from village. If I am living there and anybody offer me house somewhere else I would go right a way :-)
But please understand that I have no knowledge about what really happened there and also my view is surely different from view of somebody who grow there and live whole live.
Anyway I didn't shoot a lot there. Just one roll, bad weather and also the atmosphere which was there Sunday morning wasn't really inspiring.
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I used Across and exposed it on 160 ISO. I developed it as suggested on Paterson web site 12minutes with first 30sec non-stop inversion and than 10sec each minute. I am not finished with scanning yet but it looks like not much shadows details at all.