A photo composite by Chris Hytha.
After many years of photographing downtown urban areas, my focus has shifted to the infrastructure that is the backbone of civilization. Just a few miles from any urban core, there are massive industrial fields littered with smokestacks, rail yards, and countless tanks of unknown contents.
Coal-fired power plants are of particular interest to my exploration due to their transient nature. As the world shifts to more sustainable energy sources such as wind and solar, coal infrastructure is being rapidly decommissioned and subsequently demolished. Structures like the one in this visual are soon to be extinct, and it is an architectural typology that I find interesting.
These hulking 50s era power plants take a peculiar form. A corrugated metal clad box penetrated by various, seemingly random, small windows and vents is always accompanied by one or many smokestacks that reach hundreds of feet into the sky. Between these two features is an impossibly complicated network of pipes, ducts and conveyors.
A key element of this typology is the distribution of Coal. Some plants reside along a river, where barges ship in the commodity, while others operate by rail. This visualization is an exaggeration of a plant operated by rail. The image depicts the process of power, with coal-bearing trains in the foreground, the plant in the mid-ground, and the city it serves in the background.
I am in no way advocating for fossil fuels, and I am excited to see the nation's shift towards sustainable energy. As this exploration continues I hope to capture the past, present, and future of energy.
