What it looks like when humans vanish and nature moves back in

IN THE end “nature is stronger than man,” says photographer Jonk Jimenez — and these epic pictures of abandoned places prove it.

THERE are plenty of places in the world where humans once thrived but for whatever reason picked up and left, leaving behind abandoned homes, buildings shopping malls and castles.

Whether it’s because the money dried up or an area became contaminated, when humans vanish we cede the space to nature which slowly reclaims it.

The result is often eerie ghost towns full of quiet monuments to a more thriving past. It’s the type of thing French photographer Jonathan “Jonk” Jimenez loves to take pictures of. He thinks it highlights the ephemerality of the human reign on Earth.

For example, he recently explored a greenhouse standing next to a boarded up castle in Belgium, climbing through a broken window to take some snaps.

“It’s a rusty place with broken windows, but still it’s beautiful. I like to find beauty where you think you cannot find beauty,” he told National Geographic.

He has travelled to more than 700 abandoned locations in 33 countries on four continents. The result is his new photography book Naturalia: Reclaimed by Nature which is packed with incredible photos of places where the natural world has swallowed up places we abandoned.

He started out as an urban explorer and his quest to photograph these abandoned sites still keeps him often trespassing into places where he technically shouldn’t be, such as forgotten Soviet military bases in Belarus and an overgrown castle in Croatia.

“I found a thrill in that activity, the adrenaline that I have been looking for in everything I do in my life,” he writes about his work.

“It’s trespassing in the sense that most places are private property, but it’s trespassing without breaking or forcing into anything. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, they realise we are just photographers and send us away,” he told the magazine.

“For me, what I like to show is that nature is stronger than man. At the end, nature will win,” the photographer said.