Wires II

Nathan Harger is one of PDN's 30 new photographers to watch, and he also works the same high-contrast black on white of things strung and structural:


Untitled (Powerlines), Elizabeth, NJ 2008

Harger's working in a long tradition, maybe none more influential in this category than the documentary work of the FSA from 1935 to 1945, like this image of West Virgina telephone wires by John Vachon:



I'm certain there's something to the upward angle on these shots (and the celestial background) that gives them their reverent tone. Here's Alfred T. Palmer, 1942:


Enough to suggest even a Weschleresque convergence between John Vachon and Enrique Metinides:

As if laying the grid were ominous of an inevitable future.