Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This photographic project examines the nature of the industrial landscape as a hidden urban condition. The hypothesis is there is an urbanism that is seldom seen, yet remains intricately part of our collective urban life. The idea is there exists an accelerated and invisible geography of an industrial frontier – an urban typology defined as an “infratecture.” The scale and complexity of these landscapes force a convergence in architecture and infrastructure so that the two are no longer separate, but coalesce into an urban form defined by efficiency, pragmatism and industrial logic. It is an upstream urbanism – a hidden frontier that our relationship is subsumed and surrendered. It represents the ironic loss of the city and the primacy of the metropolis. The project uses the architectural elevation as a heuristic mechanism in rendering industrial objectivity. The architectural technique of orthographic projection adopts the panoramic mosaic as a mapping tool in the construction of the image. The resultant work conforms to orthographic principles, giving the impression of a telecentric projection, yet questions its relevance in the representation of objective reality. By its reduction into a dimensionally objective rendering, the form of the architectural image may not necessarily offer greater objectivity to the urbanscape, but instead raises insight to the limits of photographic representation.