Smokestack Photos Make Pollution Look Strangely Beautiful
Conor Clarke
conorclarke-03
Berlin-Rummelsburg, Lichtenberg (2012)
Jakob Schiller
Conor Clarke shoots photos of cooling towers, industrial smokestacks and quenching towers in Germany.
Conor Clarke shoots photos of cooling towers, industrial smokestacks and quenching towers in Germany. That probably sounds dreadfully boring, but she's made them stunningly beautiful.
It's all in her approach. Getting so close to the towers usually would require a helicopter or crane, or standing on the roof of a nearby building. And shooting from the ground can be a challenge, because surrounding buildings and trees might crowd the shot. After some experimentation, Clarke settled on working from the ground, just a short distance away from the plant. She shoots with a long lens to get in close, compressing the stacks and plumes against the sky so they look even more foreboding. She uses a medium format film camera to get the sharpest, clearest images. And she always shoots at dawn or dusk, when the light is directional and intense, to add contrast to the plumes of smoke or steam billowing out.
The resulting photos are gorgeous, even if they show something troublesome. That can leave viewers torn by what they're seeing, which is Clarke's point.
"There is definitely a conflicting feeling that people get," she says. "You are attracted to [the photos] but at the same time you feel guilty. I've heard them described as horribly pleasing."
Clarke shot more than 25 locations around Germany and believes she's visited almost every plant in Berlin. To find them, she searched online for power or coking plants, then hit the road. She discovered others by simply driving around. She's been invited in a few times, but prefers to work outside the gates because it provides a better perspective. "If I'm too close I tend to get too much tower and not enough steam," she says.
*In Pursuit of the Object, at a Proper Distance *presents a monument of industrialism as a metaphor for an overwhelming problem. Climate change has been blamed for rising temperatures, increasingly ferocious storms and even wars and conflict. Photographers have told this story in many ways---showing us shrinking glaciers, for example, or parched landscapes. But few things make the issue so visceral as a stack spewing filth into the air. That makes Clarke's photos that much more poignant.
"This is the most monstrous and dangerous object that we've chosen to represent this threat to our future," she says.
While working on the project, Clarke says she was reminded of the picturesque---a late 18th century aesthetic and art movement that developed in Europe. It often was used to describe a homogenized landscape painting that captured a sweeping view but also featured rougher, textured elements that gave the painting an edge. People known as "picturesque hunters" started flocking to locations with grand vistas so they might paint them. It became something of a contest for people to paint as many of the best-known locations as possible. Clarke felt hunting down smokestacks was a similar pursuit.
"Back in the day they were like picturesque tourists," she says. "And I'm like a post-industrial picturesque tourist."
Jakob Schiller is a writer and photographer at Raw File.
TopicsFine ArtdesignPhotography
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