Remi Lucidi, a sergeant in the French Army, died far from a battlefield. His body was found late last month next to a Hong Kong skyscraper where he had been seen near the roof.
In his spare time, Lucidi, 30, was a “rooftopper” or “roofer,” someone who takes photos from the top of skyscrapers.
After his death was reported, some users on Instagram debated the value of his art, which involved climbing ledges and antennae in cities across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. To his friends and fans, the chilling photos of him were the work of a talented and restless adventurer. To his detractors, they were a case study in reckless risk-taking.
That debate reflects tensions within a broader movement called “urban exploration,” which is often associated with people trespassing on private property to tell stories about abandoned property. Skyscraper climbing is part of urban exploration, but many of its practitioners are more interested in producing content for social media than exploring fringe urban landscapes in a pseudo-academic spirit.
In one extreme example, Russian model Viki Odintcova dangled from a Dubai skyscraper without safety equipment. Her hack garnered more than 1.6 million views after she uploaded it to Instagram in 2017 and plenty of criticism.
“To Model Viki Odintcova: That Photo Was Truly Not Worth Risking Your Life,” read the headline of a Forbes comment. Several other people around the world have died while climbing skyscrapers in recent years.
One prominent roofer, Neil Ta, a Toronto-based photographer, gave it up about a decade ago, saying he had been disillusioned to see the hobby turn into a contest over who could take the most dangerous pictures.
“Rooftopping focuses more on the thrill and experience of being in high, dizzying and dangerous places, while urban exploration explores abandoned places in a way that is safer, more documentary and historical,” said HK Urbex, a collective of masked scouts in Hong Kong, in a statement.
HK Urbex, whose members venture into abandoned or dangerous sites across China as a way to explore their history, said roofers have died from a combination of inexperience, overconfidence and a desire to take exciting photos. “A life is not worth a ‘like’ on social media,” the collective said.
Theo Kindynis, a sociologist who has studied rooftopping, said that to many urban explorers, young practitioners striking Instagrammable poses are known as “hanging guys.”
“Remi’s Instagram is full of the same tropes—legs dangling in front of a cityscape, selfie stick on top of a flagpole, silhouetted figure on a ledge—that were already becoming cliché in 2016,” said Kindynis, a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Some rooftoppers resist that characterization.
Baptiste Hermant, 23, a Frenchman who has posted photos “hanging out” but describes himself as an explorer, said most of his urban exploration happens off-camera and he does it mainly for the pleasure of drink beer with your friends on the rooftops while watching the sunrise. Hermant said that he sees urban exploration as a natural outgrowth of a childhood spent climbing rocks and trees.
As for Lucidi, he was described by friends as an experienced roofer who had a particular interest in Hong Kong’s spectacular skyline.
A message posted on one of Lucidi’s Instagram pages called him an “extraordinary photographer who captured the beauty of the world from breathtaking heights.”
One of his friends, Bulgarian roofer Yordan Boev, said on Instagram that he planned to “conquer fear every day” as a way to honor his friend’s legacy.
“Steel towers are a lot like friendships,” he wrote in another post showing the two men taking a selfie together in Bulgaria, with Lucidi holding the camera. “We build them strong and tall.”
Julien Kolly, a Zurich gallery owner who represents a French graffiti artist known for urban exploration, said Lucidi reminded him of Alain Robert, a Frenchman who has scaled buildings for decades. He added that Lucidi’s social media posts were simply a product of his time.
Lucidi’s Instagram page includes 143 posts from around the world: London, Bangkok, Dubai and Mexico City among them. In a post, she explained that she traveled a lot “to get more adrenaline to find a better way to enjoy life.” Many posts were accompanied by hashtags like #urbanrogues and #scaryhighstuffs, and humorous comments downplaying the risks she took.
About lying on a roof ledge in Warsaw two years ago, he wrote: “Relaxing on the Edge.”
By: Mike Ives, Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle and Tiffany May
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6854451, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-18 20:30:09
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