A German photographer braved a difficult sea swim to board the stricken Costa Concordia cruise liner, emerging with these remarkable and eerie images of the doomed ship. The vessel, which sank off the island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 passengers, was refloated in 2014, and moved to the port of Genoa where it sits, awaiting to be broken up for scrap.
The pictures of the interior, taken by Jonathan Danko Kielkowski, show the 290-metre ship derelict and crumbling, the theatre mangled and covered in debris, while the atrium looks like an abandoned building site. The halls are littered with suitcases from the ship’s once bustling cargo, mud-splattered and dirty from their time at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The photographer told Vice Media it was his second attempt to board the vessel, having been spotted by the coastguard on a previous attempt. His journey provides a poignant look at the fated ship that steered too close to rocks, keeled over and sunk. To see more pictures, Kielkowski has published a book, which can be bought here.