Miru Kim

Ms. Kim’s site, mirukim.com, which has made her something of a legend in urban explorer circles, contains a section devoted to a project she calls “Naked City Spleen.”

The site features color photographs of Ms. Kim, naked, posed in abandoned tunnels and structures in New York and elsewhere. In one, she crouches like a cat on a vast slab of rusting steel amid the ruins of the former Revere sugar refinery, now demolished, in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In another, she appears, back turned to the camera, squeezed into the narrow heating tunnels below Columbia University, her alma mater. The effect is powerful, not just because of the eroticism, but also because her nakedness seems to emphasize her human vulnerability.

Ms. Kim took considerable risks to obtain her images. A few years ago, she and a friend encountered a body on a trip in Washington Heights. Another time, while she was making a solo visit to the same mysterious tunnel she and Mr. Anastasio visited together, the occupant of the homeless camp appeared just as she had removed her clothes.

The Shadow City Despite her initial fear, she continued with her photography. “In my mind,” she wrote later on her Web site, “he is a dweller in one of the darkest rooms in the collective unconsciousness of all the inhabitants of New York and possibly of all modern cities.”

This sense of communicating with the city on a secret frequency may be what is most appealing to urban explorers.

***