I've writen before how I love big machinery. Big trucks, heavy lift and industrial machinery and so forth. Not for the tons of pollution they create, but simply, their steely beauty.
Sheeler coined the name Precisionism, and it is a very real element in his photographs. The photos are all high definition reflections, with stark lines and tones. No photographers in his era and few since, have been able to capture the ugliness of industry in such a beautiful way.
Here's a few examples of his work. You may be able to enlarge some, not all.
Next: The father of street photography - Henri Cartier-Bresson.
2 comments:
Lovely :)
Can't say I am a fan of big machinery ;) but these photos are exceptionally good. Like you say... [No photographers in his era and few since, have been able to capture the ugliness of industry in such a beautiful way.]
#4 and #5 especially made me think of this poem:
What is a man to do?
Oh, when the world is hopeless
What is a man to do?
When the vast masses of men have been caught by the
machine
into the industrial dance of the living death, the jigging of the
wage-paid work,
and fed on condition they dance this dance of corpses
driven by steam.
When year by year, year in, year out, in millions, in increasing
millions
they dance, dance, dance this dry industrial jig of the
corpses entangled in iron
and there's no escape, for the iron goes through their
genitals, brains and souls
then what is a single man to do?
For mankind is a single corpus, we are all one flesh
even with the industrial masses, and the greedy middle
mass.
Is it hopeless, hopeless, hopeless?
has the iron got them fast
are their hearts the hub of the wheel?
the millions, millions of my fellow men?
Then must a single man die with them, in the clutch of
iron?
Or must he try to amputate himself from the iron-
entangled body of mankind
and risk bleeding to death, but perhaps escape into some
unpopular place
and leave the fearful Lacoön of his fellow-man entangled
in iron
to its fearful fate.
- D.H. Lawrence "More Pansies"
Look forward Henri Cartier-Bresson.
CR
My son has the 2nd one (the steam engine) on his wall.
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