Industrial Landscapes

These were part of a first-year Photography exercise I had at Rusden. They're actually shot on positive film (slides), but I had them transferred to negative a while ago. It seemed natural that the industrial landscape I should choose would be of the factory in Croydon where I used to work (and suffer) before I went back to school.

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A cliche that emerged from many of the shots taken by other students in the course was that of 'nature overwhelmed by machinery' - usually represented by a factory chimney or something towering above a little plant or bush. I chose here to subvert that cliche. Those trees and that ground are still there today.

A closer look. I really liked the diagonals here and chose to emphasise them.

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I don't know if it's apparent to you yet, but I love to skew photos away from the horizontal to give a sense of disorientation. Note the plate on the bench.

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The factory's product. The 'J Bros' stands for Johnsons Brothers. I actually used to work in their tile factory next door. After I took this shot a guy came up to me and interrogated me, thinking I was a spy or something! My lecturer took points off for this shot, saying it was a close-up, not a landscape. I argued it was a 'landscape of plates' - but it didn't wash (hah, geddit - plates, didn't wash?! Oh, forget it!).

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Now this is the factory I worked in. Notice the windows: they were covered in fine red clay. Here I am, still subverting that cliche, with the tree dominating the chimney. Actually, nothing dominated that chimney. It was big, and it seemed to oppress me every time I came to work!