By: Annabelle Ma
Just last week, Remi Lucidi, a sergeant in the French Army, died in Hong Kong. His body was found on top of a skyscraper.
Mr. Lucidi, 30, was a “rooftopper,” someone who takes pictures from high places, sometimes by trespassing. He hangs onto ledges and climbs antennae on buildings across the world.
Some people appreciate Mr. Lucidi’s amazing photos, while others believe that it was dumb to take such risks.
“Urbex,” or urban exploration, is a movement associated with people who trespass to tell stories of abandoned places. Rooftoppers fit into that category, but they are more interested in producing content on social media than exploring the landscape.
Another extreme rooftopper is Viki Odintcova. She dangled off a skyscraper in Dubai without special equipment. Her stunt received 1.6 million views on Instagram, but also attracted plenty of criticism as well.
“A life is not worth a like on social media,” HK Urbex, a collective of explorers in Hong Kong, said.
“Remi’s Instagram is full of the same tropes—legs dangling in front of a cityscape, selfie stick on top of a mast, silhouetted figure on a ledge—that were already becoming cliché in 2016,” said Mr. Kindynis, a sociologist that studies rooftopping.
Baptiste Hermant, a French rooftopper, posts similar photos as Remi. But most of his experience comes off-camera when he is enjoying time with his friends at these astonishing heights.
A friend of Remi, Bulgarian rooftopper Yordan Boev, said on Instagram that he would conquer a fear every day in honor of his friend.
“Steel towers are very much like friendships,” Boev wrote in another post of him taking a selfie with Remi in Bulgaria. “We build them strong and tall.”
According to a witness, Remi was last seen knocking on the window of a 68-floor penthouse. Many say that Remi may have been attempting a stunt that caused him to fall off the high-rise building, where he captured his last post.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/asia/rooftopping-trend-remi-lucidi-hong-kong.html