- cross-posted to:
- photography@fedia.io
- cross-posted to:
- photography@fedia.io
De-Electrification, Philadelphia, PA, 2005.
All the pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/2155416560
#photography
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These (de-electrified) catenary wires were captured with a Sinar P camera and a 240mm lens on Polaroid 55 film (scanned) along the former Pennsylvania Railroad’s “high line” in west Philadelphia near the university.
This abstract composition references a 1936 painting, “Electrification”, by precisionist artist Ralston Crawford; see https://hirshhorn.si.edu//collection/artwork/?edanUrl=edanmdm%3Ahmsg%5C_72.75
Precisionism, a roughly century-old modernist American art movement related to cubism, is a strong influence here. Its practitioners included Joseph Stella, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Charles Demuth. Paul Strand was probably the most prominent precisionist photographer.
Precisionism is concerned with structure and geometry as well as the relationship between humans, machines, and the industrial landscape.
I’m interested in how the precisionists might interpret the world as it’s become today.
@mattblaze@federate.social Strand’s work reminds me so much of Dorothea Lange’s. Her philosophy seems different to me, though, although I admit the Precisionist movement is a new idea to me. Would you consider her part of the movement?
@kingtor@urbanists.social I think she considered herself more of a journalist and portraitist.
@kingtor@urbanists.social (But I agree that her compositions suggest much more than that)
@mattblaze@federate.social I agree 100% on both counts.
