Forty photographs, arranged in a four-row grid aesthetically and metaphorically link three motifs into an associative network. In the upper row, a chimney of the Aurubis AG rises up into the air, paralleled by the city’s sculpture of Hygieia, the Greek goddess of health. Recalling our current period of contagion, the bronze figure was created by Joseph von Kramer at the end of the nineteenth century after Hamburg’s devastating cholera epidemic of 1892. Erected in celebration of the outbreak’s defeat and clean water, Hygieia stands upon a fountain with her back turned on Hamburg’s City Hall, looking towards the Chamber of Commerce in a nod towards industry and trade.
In the lower rows, detailed close-ups of the fountain are ambiguously interlaced with images of stained rubber suits worn by Aurubis AG’s workers to protect themselves from sulphuric acid. The arrangement juxtaposes these persistent contradictions: the resource- and water-intensive copper industry and its pollutive impact on the Elbe, with the politically charged statue and tainted labour. Analogies arise between the copper parts of the bronze sculpture, oxidised to a green patina, and the traces of dirty work in the copper plant, thus thematising the relationships of industry, politics, and society in relation to water and material consumption.
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Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production was curated by artist, author and curator Boaz Levin and Dr. Esther Ruelfs, Head of the Photography and New Media Collection at MK&G. In cooperation with Kunsthaus Wien, Gewerbemuseum Winterthur and the HFBK Hamburg.
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Links
Interview with Dr Klaus Baumgardt, 2022
Rettet die Elbe
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Exhibitions
Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, 2023
Kunst Haus Wien Museum, Austria, 2022
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Germany, 2022
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Events
Alternative harbor tour, 2022
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Publications
Mining Photography , Spector Books, 2023
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