Ghosts of the Machine Age

As a photographer I am drawn to creating images of the infrastructure that propelled the industrial revolution of the 20th century. Within this world I document the machinery, the factory spaces, the bridges and railroads that connected all of this together as a living organism. I never approach my subjects as relics or dinosaurs of the past. What I see is the nobility of what these machines, these factories, the railroads, the bridges and tunnels have come to mean both aesthetically and as symbols of the commerce they made possible.

There was a uniquely American art movement that flourished when many of these machines and factories first came into being. Precisionism. Charles Sheeler, both a photographer and painter, was one of the creative luminaries behind this aesthetic. He saw beauty in factories and in machines as an outcome of their functionality, not their inherent design. And that is the same beauty that I seek.

I set up every photograph as if I were taking a portrait of a person of great importance and stature. Because that is what I see when I stand in awe of what the hand of man made possible. Now I inhabit a world that I have come to define as Neo-Precisionism.