Industrial Landscapes shot at Night
Torness nuclear power station shot during the nocturnal hours.
Have you ever stepped outside your photography-comfort zone? I did just that when I took an interest in a nuclear power station situated on a reclaimed peninsula here in Scotland. It was my first proper foray into the realm of night photography.
In this podcast, I describe my mixed feelings about such a place being on the door step to the John Muir way.
Please click on the image to play the podcast
Remarkable and quite beautiful. Edward Burtynsky meets Michael Kenna.
Interesting that although you seem to feel that you should be pinting this industrial(ised) landscape in a negative light, your images are actually absolutely captivating, and seem more to it romanticise it than condemn it.
The argument about man’s impact on landscape can go on for ever, but I certainly find a strong fascination with the way that man made structures blend into the natural over time. We are part of the natural landscape – what else could we be ?
I certainly symapthise with the views of John Muir and the Sierra Club founders, but I’m not entirely comfortable with them. On the one hand they may help to protect against the worst excesses of industrial and other development, but on the other hand, they tend to place a wall between the “human world” and the natural world, and in the long term I don’t feel sure that is a good thing.
Comment by David Mantripp — 7 September, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
Hi David,
I thought I was fairly neutral in my piece. I hadn’t really expressed any negative points about Torness. I just felt that there was a real juxtaposition going on. On one side we have the John Muir trust who as you pointed out – want to have places which are free from human intervention, and on the other side of the coin, we have something that ’symbolizes’ the modern world.
For me, it is a beautiful landscape. It’s a strangely beautiful one, and I feel that it is at odds with the John Muir way being right on it’s doorstep. I think what is the most strangest of all perhaps, is that no one who put all this together ever thought it was strange. But I do remember there being a time when there was a big push to demonstrate that nuclear was clean, safe, and could happily co-exist with the rest of the world.
I make no political view point in my piece (I do have my own views, but feel they are not appropriate for this site), but was merely illustrating that this place caught my imagination and I felt I wanted to do something photographically with it. Having a project is a great way to ignite some inspiration and drive us forward in our creativity.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 7 September, 2008 @ 11:07 pm