Small towns built in the XX century around one or two
factories typically provide no extraordinary opportunities for the landscape
photography. However, there is a genre combining landscape and industrial
photography traits, whose sustenance is the darkest and dullest sides of life
in such towns: fumes, ruins of factories, tailings dumps, dust. I define that
as infernal esthetics. Political including ecological connotation in this genre
in my opinion is absent, it’s all about silent statement of facts.
Any attempt to find something eye-catching among
routine circumstances of places like that typically fails in desperate efforts.
Everything is fruitless like the barren land you see in this series. But if you
have a bit of imagination, the things can change: lifeless, sometimes dangerous
places like this tailings dump, become objects of human creative thought. Their
nature being infernal from the very outset will never change, the gist here is
disclosing, highlighting this essence.
As for technical means, here a photographer benefits by filters enabling him to improve his work quality in some way or another: gradient orange adds an infernality shade to quarries, ruins, landfills and eve storm clouds; gradient grey increases sky depth; the ND group up to 400th brings in an alien shade to bottoms of quarries, rocks and grey ruins of factories; skylight group sometimes (no warranty though) saves blue colour of sky covered by clouds or dissipated fumes.
Doesn’t this genre bespeak signs of overgeneralization and exaggeration? No, absolutely, in my opinion, even more to say – I try to bowdlerize the reality that causes disgust in any sane person and impels him to flee from there, accentuating esthetic nuances created by nature. In particular, this goal is achieved by serial shooting of an object in different seasons and various weather conditions.
Dawn over the factory. Northerly wind. CPL+skylight L1A filters.
Same, CPL+gradient grey.
Waiting for sunrise. CPL+skylight L1A filters.
Same, CPL+gradient grey.
Same, CPL+gradient blue.
Pink dawn. Westerly wind. CPL+skylight L1A filters.
Just before the sunrise. CPL+skylight L1A filters.
First sunrays. CPL+gradient grey filters.
Let's make that copper-like.
Sunset over the factory. Northerly wind.
Same with the gradient blue.
Copper-like sunset. CPL+gradient grey (unsure) filters.
The day is over.
Umber everywhere. CPL+skylight L1A filters.
Umber everywhere. CPL+gradient grey filters.
Same.
