Steve Dun­can is an urban his­to­ri­an and pho­tog­ra­ph­er whose mis­sion is to “peel back the lay­ers of a city to see what’s under­neath” – to piece togeth­er the com­plex cities we inhab­it. In this fas­ci­nat­ing video, we fol­low Dun­can as he explores the under­bel­ly of New York City. Andrew Won­der, using a Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 24mm f/1.4L lens, doc­u­ments the adven­ture. The sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences must be extra­or­di­nary, as Alan Feuer (who accom­pa­nied Steve and Andrew on one of their trips) writes in the New York Times:

The sounds down here are even more impres­sive than the sights and smells: the Nia­gara-like crash of water spilling in from side drains; the rum­ble of the sub­way; the guh-DUNK! of cars hit­ting man­hole cov­ers over­head, like two jabs on a heavy bag.

For more, I high­ly rec­om­mend read­ing the NPR sto­ry, “Into the Tun­nels.” Also worth see­ing are Dun­can’s pho­tos of New York City bridges and the under­ground rivers of Lon­don. The video above has a run time of 28 min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paris Under­ground

Here we have the first aer­i­al footage of an uncon­tact­ed tribe liv­ing in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon – a peo­ple liv­ing entire­ly apart from civ­i­liza­tion as we know it. The short clip, filmed for the BBC show Human Plan­et, fol­lows Jose Car­los Meirelles, who works on behalf of the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment to safe­guard the coun­try’s indige­nous peo­ple. The liveli­hood of these indige­nous peo­ples is con­stant­ly threat­ened by ille­gal min­ing and log­ging. And it’s Meirelles’s mis­sion to pro­tect this pop­u­la­tion by pub­li­ciz­ing their exis­tence. This footage was filmed at 1 KM dis­tance with a long tele­pho­to lens to min­i­mize dis­tur­bance. To learn more about this and oth­er uncon­tact­ed tribes, vis­it http://www.uncontactedtribes.org.

via @AlyssaMilano