Photography and Industrial Heritage
My Session Status
Industrial heritage and photography have a close relationship. Photography is a source for industrial archaeology. It sheds light on the links between people, their tools, their machines and their workplaces. Once the industrial activity is over, photography is also a tool for documenting and studying the sites. But far beyond that, captured by artists capable of transcending common representations, conferring on industrial remains the ugliness of an era that was thought to be over, photography has made it possible to reveal the aesthetic force and thus to allow the qualification as heritage of neglected objects and buildings. In doing so, by evacuating the memories of dominations and struggles, photography runs the risk of fetishising a heritage reduced to its plastic dimensions. It is these different perspectives that the workshop seeks to explore.
Sub Sessions
In former Yugoslavia, after the Second World War, changes occurred in all aspects of the society. The most significant of all was the development of new industries that became the pillar support and example of new progress. The industrialization of the country became the leading branch of economy. In that period, new industries that were unknown before the war developed such as the production of machinery and equipment, shipbuilding, radio industry, oil refining and the production of cars. Wi...
More than one hundred years ago, George Eastman, founder of the Kodak brand, as the result of the invention to capture light on photo sensitive material (celluloid film), created the photographic industry, based on chemical processes – that is called, from today’s perspective, analog or film photography. The industry of the photographic film allowed us to reach an unexpected level for the use of it. It has allowed us to watch, document, educate and depict ourselves in the field of art, journ...
Few years after closure (1989) of the coalmine in Beringen, all constructions remaining were protected as "Historical Monument". Since legal protection was adopted (in 1994) this coalmine is the only one of the flemish basin (Province of Limburg) to be integrally protected. In 2013, the impressive coal processing building (or 'coal washing plant') was threatened with demolition for the first time, as the public authorities suffered of pressure by real estate agency B-Mine, redeveloping these ...
