The two images below, interestingly composing the interiors of household appliances, are part of a larger thesis project by Brittney Badger.
Picture above: an iron
Picture above: an electric mixer
Perhaps we can imagine a sort of parallel continuum of the world, a type of google-maps overlay to the condensation of this historical moment, where Badger’s meticulous dissections provide a zenith to the perception of the consumer-industrial system that grows upon the world. The display of naked artifact upon a stage without boundary: a light upon which they will be able to fix their gaze in all of tomorrow’s museums. It presents the viewer with a space of repose, clinical contemplation.
If this is so, perhaps we may find the nadir of our continuum in the work of the photographer Edward Burtynsky.
Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #17, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, 2005
Burtynsky takes the moments that buttress the pristine and glistening perfection of the consumer object as his focus. Documenting where our raw materials come from and where our material objects go, he contributes the sublime and the gritty to our continuum. It his through his eyes that the extraordinary scale of consumption, the amplitude of this moment’s engine.
“Bao Steel #8” Bao Steel in Shanghai, China. Photo by Edward Burtynsky
Opening Shot from Burtynsky’s documentary Manufactured Landscapes
See also: Manufactured Landscapes offical site with more stills from the documentary
Wow. Thanks for introducing me/us to Badgers work!