De-electrified, Philadelphia, PA, 2005.
High potential pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2155416560/
De-electrified, Philadelphia, PA, 2005.
High potential pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2155416560/
These (de-electrified) catenary wires were captured with a Sinar P camera on Polaroid 55 film (scanned) along the (former) Pennsylvania Railroad's "high line" in west Philadelphia near the university.
The wires are out of context. We don't see what they're anchored to or where they go. Alone, they're little more than abstract lines and shapes.
The composition references a 1936 painting, "Electrification", by precisionist painter Ralston Crawford; see https://hirshhorn.si.edu//collection/artwork/?edanUrl=edanmdm:hmsg_72.75 .
Precisionism, a roughly century-old American art movement related to cubism, is a strong influence on my work. Its practitioners included Joseph Stella, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Charles Demuth. Paul Strand was probably the most prominent precisionist photographer. Precisionism is concerned with structure and geometry as well as the relationship between humans, machines, and the industrial landscape.
I'm interested in how the precisionists might interpret the world as it's become today.