Photography in Doel, Belgium

A week ago, I went to Doel, Belgium with my boyfriend because I wanted to take some pictures there. I saw this on the messynessychic blog which I follow on facebook and I looked really interesting and although I live in Belgium, I never thought about going there. But now we went there because we had to be in the neighborhood anyway. It was really spooky but there were actually a lot of visitors, tourists and cartuners who apparently do photo shoots there. There are still some people who live there, that's so brave of them. Maybe I should tell the story behind Doel, so here it comes.

Doel lays next to a harbor and the Flemish government wanted to expand this,which meant Doel had to go. All the residents were given the option to sell their houses to them for a low price off course, that's how governments work. But they stumbled upon a lot off protest from the residents of Doel and also from the surrounding villages. Fortunately, in the Belgian government, there are some politicians who don't like the way they handled things and didn't sign the plans for the expansion of the harbor. This was in 2009, lots off people were forced to leave the village and lots of them did because they didn't want to get themselves in trouble I guess. But also many stayed, although these numbers really decreased by the years. I think I counted under 10 houses were people still live. They live in between the broken houses, sprayed with graffiti. You really feel sad when you see these beautiful big houses in wrecks. When you know the story behind it and you walk around there, you really feel sorry for all these people. But they still stand strong, they have meetings from time to time, the protest is still going on and the works for the harbor still haven't been approved. We're 2014 now, so maybe the residents can win this fight. But I'm sure if there's still anything to win for them because their city is already in wrecks.
Also, just out of the town, there is a nuclear site. And also a lot of the graffiti is about that. The inhabitants also tried to make sure people know that a nuclear site shouldn't be so close to village like this one is. It's really disturbing that a government does something like that.

"nuclear slave" is written on the inside of this drawing

this house has written 'nu nuk' on it, in the drawing

this image has been edited by my boyfriend

A lot of the graffiti is propaganda and protest, but they're all just pieces of art. I really enjoyed my trip to Doel and I'm going to try and keep up with the news about the little town and maybe I'll make another blogmessage about it.

Love, Sinitta