Taewon Jang
SG U #108, Inkjet print, 180x227.5cm, 2013
Industrial plants: cathedrals of the modern era. SG U #108, Inkjet print, 180x227.5cm, 2013. Tehachapi, CA. Stained Ground. January 2015. Ominous, overwhelming, and harshly illuminated at night—Korean photographer Taewon Jang (*1976 in Seoul) puts industrial plants at the center of his work. In Stained Ground, a series taken between 2007 and 2013, he juxtaposes portraits of steel factories, nuclear cooling towers, storage containers, and power-plant chimneys. Jang captures industrial landscapes in the gray of dawn or the red of dusk, by moonlight, in fog and snow; sometimes he shifts a gnarled tree into the foreground, but despite—or perhaps precisely because of—these potentially Romantic, idyllic topoi, the viewer senses an uncanny, apocalyptic mood. Large, apparently deserted industrial plants dominate the horizon, yet moving backhoes, cranes, and conveyor belts give the impression they might have a hazardous life of their own.
Stained Ground