Remnants

I have two goals with this work. One is to honour our industrial past which brought us to our hi-tech world of today. We are mostly engaged in white collar work and have little connection to where and how things are made. The other is to seek and discover beauty in places others overlook. Is an ancient broken down temple more beautiful than a gas plant? I let the viewer decide.

The genesis of this body of work was an article in Aperture on Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, a nineteenth century photographer. He was documenting the ruins of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Egypt. What struck me about this work was that our concept of archaeology ( at least in the popular mind) is about the study of ancient civilizations. Ruins of ancient buildings are considered interesting, even romantic. Ruins of recent structures, especially industrial ones, are not so interesting , at least to the average person.

As an photographer, I have found industrial subjects very interesting, especially from an aesthetic point of view. As I work in monochrome, I see this subject from a somewhat abstract point of view. Industrial sites and structures from the early twentieth century are especially interesting, as there are lots of wonderful forms and textures. I spent a lot of time photographing the Turner Valley Gas Plant, which was decommissioned in the 1970s. This plant was started in the 1920s and is a good example of early to mid-twentieth century industrial architecture. I have approached it visually as a large sculpture garden. The textures have been added by time, use, nature – in the form of invasive plants, rust and vandalism.

Ray Van Nes