at an arts festival in my hometown I came upon an elderly dutch fellow who seemed to be the only photographer on display who hadn’t committed numerous cardinal sins of photo editing and subject matter (though his work was far from groundbreaking or thought provoking). 

he saw my gaze of silent approval and in a friendly and slightly accented voice he stated proudly that he still shot, processed and developed all of his own photos, that he invented a darkroom technique in the 70’s, and that some of his photos were featured in Robocop. 

i smiled and nodded at that, and continued to do so as he went around providing exposition for landscapes of various nature scenes that hung on the canvas around us -stark and well executed, but not particularly exciting.  presently we came to a pleasantly monochrome scene of a sea shore at high noon.  “This is New Jersey, you know?” he said, as if expecting me to be astonished at the thought.  “It’s very lovely.” I replied -without adding “…in a nondescript sort of way”.  “Yes,” he continued, “All most people see of New Jersey is the turnpike, you know, on the way to New York.  Is not beautiful.  Is industrial.”

I felt a momentary sadness at that line, but chose not to press the issue.

I suppose most of us just take the work of other people for granted.  What is it that inspires the feeling of the sublime?  Surely not humbling vastness, perfect geometry, a marriage of aesthetics and usefulness.  These qualities do not belong to nature alone.  You might say that I have a thing for nature’s second cousin- for our designs are merely nature, once removed.  Just because something wasn’t here before you got here doesn’t mean that it can’t be beautiful. 

I’m not attempting to have the wilderness come off as some dull, tired cliche- it still has the power to inspire awe, even when i’m least expecting it.  The chaotic beauty of the organic world is never the same way twice.  But pure design, by the unassuming, blue collared gods of industry- in all its stages from construction to demolition- or that slow, much preferred invalidism of being left uncared for to be slowly ravaged by the elements: I wish more people would see the beauty of that. 

i cannot clear my mind of the image of the wastewater treatment plant I stumbled upon when i was sixteen.  we were wandering through the woods at dusk, lured off the busy road by the glint of construction lights and red carolina mud laid bare and riddled with rusted pipe and steel that gleamed in the sun.  it was almost dinner time and your parents thought we were making out, but there we were making our way through a most surreal pre-industrial playground. 

the manhole shafts went down what seemed like hundreds of feet into the darkness once we reached the top of the hill.  you went towards a half-built tower and I followed, and suddenly it yawned before us like something out of a dream- the kind set on an alien, futuristic version of your world that is heartbreakingly beautiful but only half remembered- the deep white basin the size of several football fields, so giant and clean and empty in the setting sun. 

we immediately slid under the rail and went down the gradually sloping walls until we reached the middle and stood in front of the gaping mouth of a giant tunnel into the earth.  the monolithic churn blocks stood in front of it as a reminder that sometime in the very near future this vast alien structure would be entirely full of human waste of all types. 

we knew, in an odd way, that we alone would appreciate this structure for anything other than its utilitarian purpose- it would literally be full of shit and thought of as nothing other than an unfortunate but necessary part of modern and civilized life that very few people would even get to see.

then your parents called you, rather irritated, and we walked back in soft tracks through the clay and the long unkempt grass that grows under the power lines and talked about things that I don’t remember.