photographers & civil engineering projects

[adrian tyler]

i'd be very interested to find out about published photo projects documenting civil engineering/construction work, it has been a constant theme throughout the history of painting, yet i am having difficulty finding any really good references to photographers who have produced important projects on this theme, any ideas?

thanks

[Struan Gray]

Henrik Saxgren's Pylonia, documenting the building of the Öresund bridge, is truly excellent:

http://www.saxgren.dk/my-books/pylonia/

http://photoeye.com/bookstore/mShowDetailsbyCatAmazon.cfm?Catalog=JL003&CFID=5158172&CFTOKEN=82622648

[Ash]

English Heritage in the UK for years has been doing photography to document Britain

[Mark Sampson]

Peter Stackpole documented the construction on the San Francisco Bay Bridge in the 1930's. This was pioneering use of 35mm (or as they said then, 'the Leica'), so non-LF. But a very impressive body of work none the less.

[Louie Powell]

Adrian -

Here in the US we have a pair of programs (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/) operated by the government. HABS documents major buildings and other significant architectural installations, while HAER concentrates on engineering. Both are extensions of the Library of Congress.

Both programs are rather stringent in terms of their expectations. Everything must be done on film, with 5x7 being the preferred format. They are mainly interested in documenting the installations, but they do allow some freedom for an artistic depiction. The work is done by a very small group of staff photographers supplemented by contracted professionals.

In addition, there are a number of informal programs worth mentioning. The Texas Church Project (http://www.texaschurchproj.com/overview.html) is a group of guys, many of whom are active on this forum, who are documenting historic churches in Texas. They work mostly in large format and many of their final images are produced in palladium/platinum. Their work was recently featured on a TV program (http://youtube.com/watch?v=QrrDMvDKEgA).

Another example is the New England Meeting House series being done by Paul Wainwright (http://www.paulwainwrightphotography.com/). Paul has had several shows and is working on a book.

Finally, there have been a number of posts on this forum that have turned out (at least in my estimation) to be significant examples of documentary photography. Examples include the recent posts on bridges and churches.

[Frank Petronio]

I'm a failed civil engineer so you can photograph me.

Alongside the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and certain Chinese school buildings.

[adrian tyler]

frank, you'll be supporting the bridge on one arm and the school on the t'other and naked, right?

louie, thanks for the information on "habs" and "haer" this is the kind of thing i'm looking for, like the saxgren book struan pointed out, rather than isolated one off shots, i'm interested in on-going documetal projects preferably of civil engineering projects.

[Richard Wasserman]

You might check out Michael Hintlian's "Digging, The Workers of the Big Dig", about how Boston remodeled itself and the people who did it. It's not large format, but 35mm shot in a gritty documentary style. Very strong work. There is a book and I believe a PBS video about his 7 year project.

[Merg Ross]

Another vote for the work of Peter Stackpole. Check out his book "The Bridge Builders". Although using a 35mm camera (as Mark notes), he was asked to join the Group f:64 as an associate. His bridge work is classic.

Most of his negatives were destroyed, along with his house, during the 1991 firestorm here in Oakland. He lived three blocks from me. Fortunately he was about to have a large retrospective at the Oakland Museum and a large number of prints were in storage there. He was one of the four original Life Magazine photographers.

[Struan Gray]

Among the internationally well-known, Burtynski probably qualifies. One of my first face-to-face encounters with a large detailed print was a small room of Vegar Moen's photographs:

http://www.vegarmoen.com/html/archive/chinarocks/crocks.html

He seems to have addressed several of the same projects as Burtynski, but with less emphasis on sheer beauty, and more empathy for the real world. Note that the scans on his website are very poor: the Shenzhen photos I saw were big prints (over a meter) with that typical LF colour neg look.

The Norwegians have some of the best civil engineers in the world, but I don't know of any good documentary projects about, say, the amazing roads through the fjordland and up in the far north. One of my batchelor dreams was to spend time slowly drifting down the length of the E6 - no better name for a photo road trip. Perhaps the Norwegians here can chip in.

Another Scandinavian worth looking for is Lennart Olson, who is known here in Sweden simply as the bridge photographer:

http://www.xpo.se/prints/scroll_photographer.asp?photoid=36

http://photoeye.com/bookstore/mShowDetailsbycatAmazon.cfm?Catalog=ZB866&i=9179881696

More a photographer of the structures once completed than the building projects though.


If history is your thing, English Heritage have an online database. Perhaps Ash can tell us if the archive in Swindon is worth a physical visit:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.1530

Also, the Science and Society Picture Library (a commercial image library) have a lot of relevant material, and might be able to help you track down some contemporary photographers. Some of the historical work is fascinating too:

http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10446871&wwwflag=2&imagepos=36

[Mark Sampson]

Of course, the later work of Lewis Hine is spectacular- his photos of the construction of the Empire State Building c.1931 stand at the pinnacle of this genre.

[adrian tyler]

yes most of the major 19th-early 20th centry civil works were well documented, fourth road bridge, eiffel tower...

[bgh]

Unfortunately, from the research that I've done with dams and hydroelectric projects, much of the best photographic documentation of construction is unpublished. I've seen several sets of knock-your-socks-off 8x10 contact prints of construction documentation that are kept in some department or another of the company that built the facility. I've attached a quick and terribly inadequate scan of one of these, a hydroelectric powerhouse under construction in the late 1930s.

I'd love to talk one of my clients into letting me do some of this old-fashioned kind of photographic documentation of new construction projects.

I'd also second the recommendation to search the HABS/HAER collections--they're an incredible resource, with some darn fine photographs mixed in. Here's the search page:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/

Bruce

[Antonio Corcuera]

Adrian, I can recommend Charles Clifford's documentation of the construction of Madrid's waterworks (Canal de Isabel II). I can't remember the name of the book, but a quick google of Clifford brought this: http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia/exhibition/bne/bne_infra3.html
(btw, the rest of the page/exhibition is very interesting)

[claudiocambon]

I highly recommend the book project called I believe simply 'Courthouse' in which a lot of East Coast greats from the 70's and 80's documented courthouses I think only in the NE. It's been a long time since I have looked through it, but it was quite sizable in scope, and the work is beautiful. Not quite engineering, but it speaks to building our society nonetheless.

[Allen in Montreal]

Unfortunately...... much of the best photographic documentation of construction is unpublished.........

Bruce

I think this remains true today.

My dear friend Gordon Beck spent his life documenting Montreal, The construction of Expo 67, the Olympic site, The Metro system, the closing of factories, the demolition of historical sites, the last locomotive round houses and, over 20 years, he walked and logged every single street in the city center with binders full of negatives.
He has never published any of it!

[C. D. Keth]

There's an article in the July/August ViewCamera about one of the staff HABS photographers.