konzeptuelle Fotografie | Vincent De Bronac | 2012
Nordwestbahnhof is a former Viennese train station, nowadays mostly abandoned, only a part of whom being used as a truck station. On the rest of its vast surface, rust the trains that once used to be its pride. Analog is a work highlighting this constant aging. Rust writes on trains the inevitable fleeing of time and its slender traces on metal give a good idea of the flatness and the quietness of the mood that nowadays fleets over the place.
The massive aspect of these huge pieces of metal constituting the ground of old merchandise trains, systematically photographed from above recalls the power that these machines once exhaled, when they used to ensure the traffic of all goods through Europa. This systemic has for consequence that the photographs all look nearly alike, which can be interpreted as a tribute to the industrial power, to the huge factories that used to produce these heavy pieces of metal by series of thousands.
On the other hand, these pieces of metal are shaped like an analog film, and, as one can’t see their thickness on the photographs, the viewer can be confused about their scale and lead to think that they are fragile, thin plastics bits in which the holes would have been made by a simple punch. This sensation of fragileness is obviously reinforced by the constant presence of the rust, and the simple fact that these trains are all empty.
By putting in evidence this fragileness, this emptiness, this useless aspect of these huge machines, this work can remind us that even the biggest and most powerful things have an end, here being the end of the industrial age replaced by the power of the digital.
Nordwestbahnhof is a former Viennese train station, nowadays mostly abandoned, only a part of whom being used as a truck station. On the rest of its vast surface, rust the trains that once used to be its pride. Analog is a work highlighting this constant aging. Rust writes on trains the inevitable fleeing of time and its slender traces on metal give a good idea of the flatness and the quietness of the mood that nowadays fleets over the place.
The massive aspect of these huge pieces of metal constituting the ground of old merchandise trains, systematically photographed from above recalls the power that these machines once exhaled, when they used to ensure the traffic of all goods through Europa. This systemic has for consequence that the photographs all look nearly alike, which can be interpreted as a tribute to the industrial power, to the huge factories that used to produce these heavy pieces of metal by series of thousands.
On the other hand, these pieces of metal are shaped like an analog film, and, as one can’t see their thickness on the photographs, the viewer can be confused about their scale and lead to think that they are fragile, thin plastics bits in which the holes would have been made by a simple punch. This sensation of fragileness is obviously reinforced by the constant presence of the rust, and the simple fact that these trains are all empty.
By putting in evidence this fragileness, this emptiness, this useless aspect of these huge machines, this work can remind us that even the biggest and most powerful things have an end, here being the end of the industrial age replaced by the power of the digital.