These stunning photos reveal the forgotten and decaying beauty of a once prosperous island city in Japan. The city is called Gunkanjima and is about 15 kilometers south of Nagasaki. The place is well known as a forbidden treasure of urban development in ruins.
Although the safety of the island is very strict , apparently not hard enough to keep the Australian photographer, Shane Thoms off the island. And we are happy that he has found a way to enter, because their ghost town of photos are absolutely mesmerizing .
The city of Gunkanjima came years ago as a housing project for people working in the coal mine there. But when the mine was closed in 1974 , the city was abandoned and the buildings left vacant and forgotten. Decades passed and the city began to rot and decay , slowly taking a post- apocalyptic appearance now has
In 2009, the island was declared a UNESCO world heritage site, which means that security has become intense. Now, visitors are only allowed to stay on the island for 30 minutes, and even then, they are required to stay within a special fenced in area. But Shane Thoms wanted to see more, so he planned to sneak into the island with some friends to spend the night and shoot the concrete deteriorating. The boys were able to reach the island by boat with a guide. The fisherman left them on the island and they began their stealthy exploration of the forgotten city. "Forty years of no maintenance had taken its toll, with many stairs and hallways falling apart" Thoms wrote on his website. "After a while I got completely lost in an impressive maze of small alleys of decayed concrete and narrow staircases covered with moss." They watched the sunset from a roof and pitched among the ruins that night. The next morning, they explored a little further and continued taking pictures until the fishing boat came to pick them up again.
