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ALT

John Davies, Agecroft Power Station, Salford, 1983

First time I saw a print of this photo was at the 2009 exhibit Planète Parr at the Jeu de Paume. It was an exhibit that combined Martin Parr’s photography with his own collection of photography and objects (a lot of it political kitsch eg. Margaret Thatcher mugs, Saddam Hussein watches). To contextualize his own photographs, there was a selection of 1970-80s photography taken in the UK, including work by Peter Mitchell, Tony Ray-Jones, Tom Wood and Chris Killip. Next to those photographers, featuring portraiture, period interiors, street and other social observation, and then Parr’s own recent very large color prints, Davies’ topographic study was perhaps doomed to be the most boring work in the show. But the details captured with large format (the horse!) elevate this from a one note commentary on industrialization to the perfect Eames’ “Power of Ten” glimpse of a society at a time and place.

The (coal) cooling towers lasted only another 11 years after Davies’ photo, Nick Harrison made this remarkable image of their destruction in 1994.