Underground 1 – The Sewers, with a Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f1.5

The sewer museum in Brussels is entered through one of the former tax collection buildings at the Porte d’Anderlecht (left in the featured image) and exited through the building on the right. In-between you pass by the river, diverted underground in 1867 because it was a serious health risk (not an unusual problem in cities in that era!).

You might be put off going underground to the sewers by,
1. the smell: nowhere near as bad as the preamble suggests though, admittedly, not my favourite perfume;
2. the (brown) rats: all six million of them, though the only one I saw was stuffed in the museum. If you want to see rats I suggest you visit the Parc de Bruxelles, anytime of the day but night is best.

The rats apparently serve a useful function in the sewers, eating larger debris though they don’t deal with the sewer workers’ worst nightmare – ‘wet wipes’, which don’t disintegrate and cause blockages which often have to be cleared by hand. The workers wear gloves fortunately …… and sealed body suits with wellington boots, and hard hats.

The focus of the museum are the exhibitions, a temporary one for 2024-2025 on the water cycle and its management, and the main museum with a well laid out explanation of the sewer system, its management and the workers. The underground section is quite small – partly to allow entry to school children while avoiding significant losses – but nevertheless displays some of the main features of the system.

I photographed using the Zeiss Sonnar on a Sony A7Riii because I had no idea how good or bad the lighting might be. I shot at f2 with aperture priority and auto iso between 100 and 1600. At some time I shall revisit with a film camera and 400asa film pushed to 800 which would handle most situations I think having seen the camera choices of film speed.

The tapered elliptical shape of the typical sewer is actually quite complex designed to optimise a variety of criteria including allowing workers to travel through, coping with very variable amounts of liquid (including rain and floodwater), and sustaining the weight of roads, buildings and traffic above.

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