Schuylkill Co-Generation Plant and Arsenal Bridge, Philadelphia, PA, 2018
All the pixels, slightly rusted, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/42660696454
#photography
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2025
4 points (100.0% liked)
Photography
0 readers
155 users here now
All things photography. Share your own original photos, your questions, your inspiration.
Rules
Share your own original photography. No NSFW images. Be Nice.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I shot several versions of this, with exposures that kept the moving train sharp or blurred it to varying degrees. I think this was the most successful attempt, with the train blurred enough to suggest motion, but not so much that it's unrecognizable.
Motion is sometimes a central part of a still photograph.
Power plants are often regarded as utilitarian eyesores, and are rarely (generally under public pressure) built to look beautiful or interesting, (London's Battersea Power Station was an exception). Generally, like here, any beauty to be found is accidental, a direct consequence of interesting form happening to follow from function.
Arguably, given the health and environmental effects of things like power plants, perhaps they should be ugly. But ugliness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
In any case, if you like this kind of stuff, let me strongly recommend the work of Hilla and Bernd Becher. https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/bernd-and-hilla-becher
@[email protected] they remember me, mutatis mutandis , Eugène Atget work, documenting the changes in the city of Paris in the late XIX century. He was also saying that he didn’t do it for art, but just documenting what was changing, like personal memories… art or not ? Fascinating nonetheless
@andre123 With both Atget and the Bechers, it's interesting that the art is at least as much in the body of work as a whole as it is any of the individual pieces.
@[email protected] absolutely, they began taking pictures maybe for personal pleasure, but they ended up creating an impressive work (of art) ! Do you think we could say the same for Vivian Mayer’s work?
@andre123 Indeed. Dittto Weegee.
@[email protected] oh yes, love his work, he surely had sense of humour and artistic abilities (sorry for my English). While mayer’s work is a lot more intimate to my eyes, like discovering her soul, wondering in the streets, film roll after film roll.