These portraits, were first inspired by my exploration of the defunct Bethlehem Steel site, which engendered in me a desire to capture the hidden beauty that I find in these industrial ruins, too often seen as repulsive brownfields. From the day I first stepped foot on the Bethlehem Steel site, I felt a sort of magic. This feeling of magic is what I strive to elicit in my photographs, Abstract Portraits of Steel.
I find that the erosive effects of the elements have transformed the facades of the mill into textural canvases. To me these textural metal surfaces are similar to moss, where the colors are more alive and vibrant after a good rain. The right kind of cloudy days, often provide ideal conditions, that mimic a giant soft box. At times, the shimmering surfaces seem to whisper at me, perpetually emerging from semi darkness my eye would be instantly drawn to the colorful patinas, in which I would find what many others liken to watercolor or oil painted portraits.
I will work with a façade for quite some time, selecting the appropriate lens, composing and shifting the camera to get the perfect aspect and plane ratio, until I feel that I have captured the intensity, beauty and magic as I saw it in that moment.
While I feel my formal training and coursework in relation to the elements of design: line, shape, value, color, space and texture plays a significant role in my development as an artist and in my photography, I feel my development of being more strongly reflects my being able to connect with raw subconscious impressions. To bring forth what resides below the surface of perception, it’s many layers and meaning, a palimpsest.
Images from the Slate Abstracts collection evolved from my years spent photographing at the mills. The patterns caused by the flaking, fracturing and cleavage of slate, caught my eye on a first visit to a slate quarry in the Slate Belt of Pennsylvania. While a commanding expression of the elements of design seems to necessitate and be a precondition for strong abstract imagery, I aspire to go beyond capturing compelling story-like images that elicit raw subconscious impressions. Bringing forth what resides below the surface of perception, it’s many layers and meaning. Creating painterly-like photographs that lay bare unlikely beauty in unexpected places.
My Slate Abstracts feature ancient deposits of slate, millions of years in the making, unearthed and roughed by the hands and tools of quarrymen and the elements. Of what is, in essence, an ever changing canvas, painting created over long periods of time, stilled through my lens and camera at just the right moment.
Scrapyards – I find to be fantastical playgrounds. Bold, edgy, raw & iconic in material. Extraordinary finds. Of course, the ones I am granted access to. There is a whole different level of security and challenges with getting access to, or even trespassing onto, scrapyards as opposed to the abandoned mills and other industrial sites. Today, when the owner of a scrapyard says NO, I move onto the next one. Albeit, in my first days of exploring yards, I snuck onto a few scrapyards and even got caught sneaking on to one yard in Ohio, by both a police officer and the scrapyard security guard, near simultaneously. Luckily, the security guard saved me from being arrested by the police officer, and from there I was granted access to the yard!
Images from The Yards collection, are a natural progression from my exploration of the defunct Bethlehem Steel site, which engendered in me a desire to capture the hidden beauty of rust that I find on weathered steel. There is a certain level of intensity at the scrapyards, whether it is the sharpness of the edges in the mass of the many piles, the bustling and brashness of the large machines and trucks, or the snakes in the summertime that nestle among the massive piles of steel. It is ever-present. And too, the steel at the scrapyards just like the slate, in its final stages, is roughed by the hands and machines of men before I come along and capture its ephemeral beauty. It is always fascinating when I am able to learn where the pieces in a yard have come from, whether it be from old mine cars, the side of a transformer from Duquesne Power & Light, a classic car or large beams from the World Trade Center and much more.
Scrapyards I find to be fantastical playgrounds. Bold, edgy, raw & iconic in material. Extraordinary finds. Of course, in the ones I am granted access to. There is a whole different level of security and challenges with getting access to, or even trespassing onto, scrapyards as opposed to the abandoned mills and other industrial sites. Many are guarded by dogs. Today, when the owner of a scrapyard says NO, I move onto the next one. Albeit, in my first days of exploring yards, I snuck onto a few of them and even got caught sneaking onto one yard in Ohio, by a police officer and the scrapyard guard, near simultaneously. Luckily, the security guard saved me from being arrested by the police officer, and I was also granted access to the yard!
Images from The Yards collection, are a natural progression from my exploration of the defunct Bethlehem Steel site, which engendered in me a desire to capture the hidden beauty of rust that I find on weathered steel. There is a certain level of intensity at the scrapyards, whether it is the sharpness of the edges in the mass of the many piles, the bustling and brashness of the large machines and trucks, or the snakes in the summertime that nestle among the massive piles of steel. Out West, you have even more snakes and endless barbwire to contend with. It is ever-present. And too, the steel at the scrapyards just like the slate, in its final stages, is roughed by the hands and machines of men before I come along and capture its ephemeral beauty. It is always so fascinating when I am able to learn where the pieces in a yard have come from, whether it be from old mine cars, the side of a transformer from Duquesne Power & Light, John Deere tractors - farm equipment, and out West many great finds on the sides of classic automobiles.
Near mostly all things fall to ruin with some form of grace, these industrial landscapses capture the ruins in a light that calls attention to a view different from the repulsive brownfield. It wasn’t’ until I signed out the Fuji 617 camera when I was a student at RIT that I considered seriously shooting the marcro field of view of industry... 35mm format was just not cutting it in terms of capturing the space. For me, the 617 format comes close to capturing what it feels like to be in these places. Within short order, after maximizing the allowances for taking out the Fuji 617 camera from the cage at RIT, I had my own Fuji 617, and after a big gust of wind blew it over, smashing it to the gound, I got a Linhoff 617, and some beautiful Schneider lenses along with it, which I adore...
Micro to macro, extended views, scale, massiveness, geometry of the landscapes that almost take you from the presented reality of the image to the incipient mystery that ebbs right below the surface that is always lurking - dream-world breaks into reality, just trying to come through but can’t. Sense of strangeness pervades, a surreal-ness, that carries the suspended state, states of suspension in time. A time capsule. It is pure fascination and curiosity that keeps me pressing forward, half-muting the dark, eerie and unfamiliar vibrations that often permeate industrial ruins.
Down the spelunking rabbit hole... Floors turn to walls, walls into ceilings. The tunnels, chambers, shafts, tracks, machines, and even debris from collapsed caverns present scenes that are at first surreal, but then become as natural as our own bodies. Many of the entrances are locked behind gates or covered by fill, few are washed open by erosion or manuevered open by hands of some trespasser before. While the paths are rarely random, as they follow or connect veins of ore or coal, it is easy enough for one to get lost if not closely paying attention. Pillars are spaced according to what the rock can bear. What was once design by trial and error eventually became engineered. Survey marks soon become waypoints, just as they were to the professionals laying out the mines. Bad roof and black damp (a toxic gas) become almost predictable as patterns emerge. Time stands still many places, but very clearly passes in others, especially the wood and iron supports and tools that rot away, or the rocks that fall as the ground freezes and thaws, and coal decays.
Unlike factories where material passed through in incomprehensible quantities, the mines clearly show what was taken. Some are short, extending only a few hundred feet before reality dashed the hopes of the prospector, while others succeeded, and stretched for miles. The voids in the earth are rare paths into the substances that our world is built on and from. Paths that are dark not by design, but by nature, visible only to those who actively pursue them with the gift of their light.
Unsightly to some, a reminder of hard labor and even death to others, but to a select few, the mines are an object of love, a lifestyle that runs in the blood. The cool, quiet, darkness brings a strange comfort to those who know the tunnels, as well as certain types of mysteries, once of what riches awaited a little deeper, and now today, the mystery of what beauty can be unveiled from the shapes and shadows, the pools and reflections, and the spaces themselves, some as intimate as a lying in a hammock, like the low vein anthracite that must be crawled into. To the land of the giants, where the voids of cement mines left misty cathedral like spaces. Reminiscent, in notion, of a place my parents took my brother and I to hike when I was a child.
A dangerous beauty, that fills you with a certain buoyancy upon surfacing, after spending many hours below. The variance in the auditory shift alone, from noises that are strange, and often haunting, lifelike from water dripping (in some mines even rushing water), and unbroken echoes from your own presence. When you surface, everything feels anew. The smell of deep earth lingers as you journey home like a firefly in the night.
Did I mention, that above ground I am claustrophobic... somehow curiosity wins! I would sleep brazen under an open sky every night if viable.
