The newspaper said that the battle was over. The forest giant owning the old Martinniemi sawmill’s power station was given permission to demolish it along with the huge chimney, which had been the landmark of the village for close to a hundred years.
I found the place in 2011, photographed there in 2014 and visited it twice during the previous summer. I did a photoshoot with a dancer just a few months before the news about the demolition came.
My aspiring adulthood meant, that I was working during the days. In Oulu it gets very dark very early, so I had no chance to visit the site during daylight hours. I had to do it after my shift had ended.
This was the last picture I managed to take from the old power station. I needed the help of my car’s headlights. As you can see, demolition had already started. The place was now more heavily guarded than it was during its time as an urbex location. A patrolling guard made a tour to see what I was doing, but as he saw that I just photographed, he went away.
First they tore down the power station, then the chimney with a demolition robot hanging from a crane. And yet another local landmark disappeared.
This is how the place looked like in 2011.
And here’s the photo shoot with the dancer in 2017.