Industrialism brought forward….

The aim of my project has been to capture some of what remains from the architecture of the industrial era in an attempt to represent this period of time through modern digital technology making a connection between our current digital revolution and the industrial revolution.

My work has a documentary nature and I have used photography as my main methodology. The weight of photography as a documenting tool can be observed in its history as an indexical sign and with its reference to the past, the ‘still’ creates a signifier of the memorable.

The following are key contextual points that helped to form the foundation from which my project was constructed:

I have taken inspiration from photographers of the New Objectivity movement (1920s) like Renger-Patzsch, Karl Blossfeldt (1928) and Emmanuel Sougez (1939) characterised by a detached, almost scientific objectivity and precise attention to detail. These aesthetics kept influencing photographers in the 1960s such as industrial photographer Wolfgang Sievers.

They also influenced Bernd and Hilla Becher whose photographic prints where ordered to form object families – called typologies. By putting the images next to each other the rhetoric of a document was reinforced. An archive concept was created, photography being a starting point for the memory to work.

Most recently, influenced by Duchamp, we have Hiroshi Sugimoto and his series Conceptual Forms (2004). He is interested in the 19 and 20th centuries. He regards all photographs as being found objects, “they are stealing the image from the world” and making it into a multiple.

In connection to my moving image piece, I must mention Étienne-Jules Marey (1890s) whose work was developed out of methodological and precise experiments. His experiments to capture movement where named Chronophotography, which were a set of photographs of a moving image taken from the same viewpoint at equal intervals.
The theme of water, an aspect of my own piece, is recurrent in Roni Horn’s work. In her installations for Library of Water (2007) she created an archive of water from 24 glacial sources across Iceland. And her Still Water piece (1999) is a series of photographs of water with tiny numbers that refer to footnotes presenting a series of quotations on the moods and narratives that the river evokes.

Visiting different industrial locations I observed that a key component to machinery of the time was their valves, both an essential artefact for the machine to function and a direct allusion to the human/machine relationship and dependency.

Water was also a very important element, the vital force that made steam engines possible – and with them the creation of numerous kinds of revolutionary machinery – and it was a vital means of transport, the canal system being the main artery for commerce and industrial expansion.

I considered that my project, being a photographic documentation, should have a methodical and definite stylistic approach. I researched what was going to become my methodology; a way of working that will allow my referents to talk for themselves. I explored different techniques to acquire a good range of tonality in spaces with low lighting issues.

I have chosen two different ways of representing the two elements (valves and water) and currently I am working on finalising my two pieces.

1. The valves I have photographed methodically and I intend to present them forming a typology of 12 that will depict the archival desire invested in the capturing of these images. The long exposure photographs have been treated in postproduction by using an HDR process in Photomatix and then synthesising two different exposures in Photoshop. They have then been taken through a process of photo intaglio. Because of the nature of my image referent I find it appropriate to reproduce it in archival paper made using a traditional cylinder mould machine from 1907. The surface of this paper has a gentle texture made out of cotton that offers a long life and durability, so in some way this paper has been infused with similar craftsmanship as that of the valves. By mixing the sophisticated digital processes with a printing technique that has its origins at the birth of photography I am trying to make a reference to the encapsulation of time as well as investing thought into the different output surfaces in which the digital image can be reproduced.

2. The water, I have chosen to represent this second aspect as a piece of moving image made out of Chronophotography. Chronophotography allows the subversion of real time to a different pace, it creates a juxtaposition of technologies; photography representing a pensive moment and film representing the present. Photographs when showed one after the other give us the illusion of motion whilst presenting the subtleties of individually captured moments.

I methodically photographed the same spot of water on different days. I took over 6000 photographs that compose five different captures. To mirror the process used on the valve images where I merged two different exposures I am exploring the merging of two different footages into one. This presents to the viewer a double set of information of exactly the same location captured at different times, bringing the concept of time capture closer to mind.
The pace of the sequence will slow down at random intervals reminding us of the static nature of the footage and bringing back the pensive quality of photography.