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Tansmission Towers

I remember as a boy seeing a soviet propaganda cartoon extolling the electrification of the USSR, in which great transmission towers marched like proud soldiers through towns, across valleys, and over mountains, as if the towers were themselves national heroes. 

Despite their massive importance, these towers are often ignored or seen as aesthetic litter.  Where I am from, there are clear-cut swaths in the forest, hard and straight over the gentle hills of the Appalachians.  It is hard to see this and not imagine an act of destruction.  However, as Roman Aqueducts remain as reminders of powerful but collapsed civilization in Europe, so in some ways are these towers a great work of our nation.

By photographing transmission towers both as objects abstracted from their purpose and as elements of the environment, I hope to invite contemplation of the importance of infrastructure, as well as its ecological cost.  The use of black and white film serves to further abstract the towers from everyday experience by rendering them as strongly geometric shapes.  The timeless quality of black and white prints is reminiscent of the stark white of surviving classical statuary; in effect treating these infrastructure objects as sculpture.

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