Schuylkill Co-Generation Plant and Arsenal Bridge, Philadelphia, PA, 2018
All the pixels, slightly rusted, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/42660696454
#photography
This was captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR Digaron-W lens and the Phase One IQ3-100 back. A bit of vertical shift was used to keep everything straight. A 1/2 sec exposure provided just the right amount of motion blur for the passing train.
The power plant generates electricity (now oil fired, converted from coal) as well as steam for Philly’s Center City steam loop. The rail bridge extends the former Pennsylvania Railroad’s “High Line” into south Philly’s Greenwich rail yard.
I shot several versions of this, with exposures that kept the moving train sharp or blurred it to varying degrees. I think this was the most successful attempt, with the train blurred enough to suggest motion, but not so much that it’s unrecognizable.
Motion is sometimes a central part of a still photograph.
Power plants are often regarded as utilitarian eyesores, and are rarely (generally under public pressure) built to look beautiful or interesting, (London’s Battersea Power Station was an exception). Generally, like here, any beauty to be found is accidental, a direct consequence of interesting form happening to follow from function.
@mattblaze@federate.social I’m pretty partial to Copenhagen’s Amager Bakke
@mattblaze@federate.social in this selfie I took yesterday in Armenia you can just make out Yerevan’s main source of power generation if you zoom and enhance
Arguably, given the health and environmental effects of things like power plants, perhaps they should be ugly. But ugliness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
In any case, if you like this kind of stuff, let me strongly recommend the work of Hilla and Bernd Becher. https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/bernd-and-hilla-becher
@mattblaze@federate.social These are great, remind me of my fumbling photos as a teenager amid Bethlehem Steel: https://infinite-monkeys.org/michael/bethlehem-steel/bethlehem-steel.html
@mattblaze@federate.social they remember me, mutatis mutandis , Eugène Atget work, documenting the changes in the city of Paris in the late XIX century. He was also saying that he didn’t do it for art, but just documenting what was changing, like personal memories… art or not ? Fascinating nonetheless
@andre123 With both Atget and the Bechers, it’s interesting that the art is at least as much in the body of work as a whole as it is any of the individual pieces.
@mattblaze@federate.social absolutely, they began taking pictures maybe for personal pleasure, but they ended up creating an impressive work (of art) ! Do you think we could say the same for Vivian Mayer’s work?
@andre123 Indeed. Dittto Weegee.
@mattblaze@federate.social Those Hilla/Becher photos reminded me of the Jim Handy film “Master Hands”.
