Their Rooftop Photos Are Stunning. Their Subculture Has Its Critics.

Remi Lucidi, a sergeant within the French Army, died removed from a battlefield. His physique was discovered final week apart a Hong Kong skyscraper the place he had been noticed close to the rooftop.

In his spare time, Mr. Lucidi, 30, was a “rooftopper,” shorthand for somebody who takes photographs and selfies from the tops of tall buildings, generally by trespassing. After his loss of life was reported, some Instagram customers debated the worth and objective of his artwork, which concerned clambering onto ledges and antennae in cities throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

To pals and admirers, Mr. Lucidi’s spine-tingling photographs had been the work of a proficient, stressed adventurer. To his critics, they had been a case research in reckless risk-taking.

That debate mirrors tensions inside a broader motion referred to as “urban exploration,” or “urbex,” one that’s typically related to individuals who trespass to be able to inform the tales of deserted properties. Rooftopping is a part of urbex, however lots of its practitioners are extra fascinated about producing social media content material than in exploring marginal city landscapes with a quasi-academic spirit.

In an excessive instance, the Russian mannequin Viki Odintcova dangled from a Dubai skyscraper with out security gear. Her stunt generated greater than 1.6 million views after she posted it on Instagram in 2017, and loads of criticism.

“To Model Viki Odintcova: That Photo Was Really Not Worth Risking Your Life,” learn the headline of a Forbes commentary. (She didn’t reply to a request for remark.) Several others all over the world have died whereas rooftopping lately.

Criticism generally comes from throughout the urban-exploration motion. A distinguished rooftooper, the Toronto-based photographer Neil Ta, give up the apply a few decade in the past, saying that he had been disillusioned to see the pastime flip right into a contest over who might take essentially the most harmful footage. Other critics are urbex veterans who object to the rooftopping ethos.

“Rooftopping is focused more on the thrill and the experience of being in high, vertiginous and perilous locations, whereas urbex explores abandoned places in a way that is safer, more documentational and historical in nature,” HK Urbex, a collective of masked explorers in Hong Kong, stated in an announcement.

HK Urbex, whose members enterprise into deserted or harmful websites throughout the Chinese territory as a method of exploring its historical past, stated that rooftoppers have died all over the world from a mix of inexperience, overconfidence and the need to take thrilling footage.

“A life is not worth a like on social media,” the collective stated.

Theo Kindynis, a sociologist who has studied rooftopping, stated that to many city explorers, younger rooftoppers who interact in made-for-Instagram antics are often known as “dangle kiddies.”

“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,” stated Mr. Kindynis, a professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, referring to Mr. Lucidi.

Some rooftoppers push again towards that characterization. One is Baptiste Hermant, 23, a Frenchman who has posted “dangling” photographs however described himself in an interview as an explorer, not a rooftopper.

Mr. Hermant stated most of his city exploration occurs off digicam, and that he does it primarily for the pleasure of ingesting beer along with his pals on rooftops, after nighttime climbs, whereas watching the dawn.

“To be on a roof is just my thing,” Mr. Hermant stated, including that he sees city exploration as a pure outgrowth of a childhood spent scaling rocks and timber.

As for Mr. Lucidi, his pals described him in interviews as an skilled climber who had a specific curiosity in Hong Kong’s dramatic skyline. A assertion posted to one in every of his Instagram pages this week referred to as him an “extraordinary photographer who captured the beauty of the world from breathtaking heights.”

One of his pals, the Bulgarian rooftopper Yordan Boev, stated on Instagram that he deliberate to “conquer fear everyday” as a method of honoring his good friend’s legacy.

“Steel towers are very much like friendships,” he wrote in one other publish that confirmed the 2 males taking a selfie collectively in Bulgaria, with Mr. Lucidi holding the digicam. “We build them strong and tall.”

Julien Kolly, a gallerist in Zurich who represents a French graffiti artist recognized for city exploration, stated that Mr. Lucidi reminded him of Alain Robert, a French stuntman who has scaled buildings all over the world for many years. He added that Mr. Lucidi’s social media posts had been merely a product of his period.

“During his time, Alain Robert could only rely on the press to cover his ascents, whereas nowadays, Remi Enigma takes charge of staging and photographing his own exploits to feed his Instagram account,” Mr. Kolly stated, referring to Mr. Lucidi’s Instagram nom de plume.

Mr. Lucidi’s loss of life was confirmed by phone on Thursday by the French army and reported earlier by The South China Morning Post and different news retailers. He was on trip in Hong Kong when he died, stated a French army spokesperson who declined to be named, citing protocol.

The Hong Kong authorities haven’t confirmed the precise circumstances of the loss of life, saying solely that the law enforcement officials discovered Mr. Lucidi’s physique after responding to a name from a safety guard.

Mr. Lucidi’s Instagram web page contains 143 posts from excursions all over the world — London, Bangkok, Dubai, Mexico City and so forth. In one publish, he defined that he traveled broadly “to get more adrenaline to find a better way to enjoy life.”

Many of his posts had been accompanied by hashtags like #urbanrogues and #scaryhighstuffs, and playful captions that made mild of the dangers he took to get his pictures.

“Relaxing on the Edge,” he wrote of mendacity on a roof ledge in Warsaw two years in the past.

Mr. Lucidi had made a number of journeys to Hong Kong. His final goal there was the Tregunter Towers, a three-building luxurious residence that sits on a quiet, winding highway close to the mountainous backbone of town’s essential island — excessive above the trams, buses, workplace buildings and pedestrians beneath. The South China Morning Post reported {that a} witness had seen him knocking on the window of a 68th-floor penthouse.

On Friday morning, safety guards on the advanced had been standing behind a black gate shrouded by subtropical foliage with purple flowers. Domestic staff guided pedigree canines and child strollers up and down slender, twisting sidewalks.

A couple of runners had been heading additional uphill, towards a mountain climbing path that climbs by means of a forest to a mountain peak with panoramic views. Some paused to look again on the identical skyline that Mr. Lucidi had captured in his final publish.