Schuylkill Co-Generation Plant and Arsenal Bridge, Philadelphia, PA, 2018.All the pixels, moving slowly, at flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/42#photography

A mid-century power plant, with four prominent smokestacks atop an industrial building, at left across a small river. At right, a railroad drawbridge crosses the river, with a freight train slowly streaking across.
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[–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

Power plants are often regarded as utilitarian eyesores, and are rarely (generally only under public pressure) built to look beautiful or interesting, (London's Battersea Power Station was a notable exception). Generally, like here, any beauty to be found is accidental, a direct consequence of interesting form happening to follow from function.

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  • @mattblaze I still think the Waste Incineration Plant in Vienna (which also supplies heat to the city) is the undisputed winner in the beautification stakes with its Hundertwasser design. But I agree that the stark, often brutalist architecture of power plants has its own beauty. I love Torness Power Station on the beautiful East Coast of Scotland and Dungeness, down in the South, particularly when viewed from Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage garden. Both give quite an eery vibe

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    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. fraenkelgallery.com/artists/be

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    @mattblaze oh if you’re into this question have a look for Wolfgang Sievers’ work from the 1970s, he’d got into industrial photography and was incredibly good at making processes look beautiful, but eventually wound up questioning the ethical impact of doing that, and stopped

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