ELEVATIONS
Larry G. Blackwood
I grew up on the plains of Kansas where grain elevators are ubiquitous and dominating in the landscape. As a teenager, when I first became interested in photography as an art form, these elevators were one of the first subjects I was drawn to. Living the last 25 years in Montana and Idaho has provided me further connection with these structures, as has traveling often back and forth across the Great Plains. My photographic style has changed over the years but my interest in elevators and related structures has not. A few years ago, I started in earnest to put together a portfolio of images of these farming icons.
The evolution of my interest in elevators as photographic subjects followed the opposite of Gohlke, whose book of elevator photographs I came across while working on this project.* Gohlke started out photographing isolated components of elevator structures, but moved to thinking that the buildings cannot be properly considered separate from the surrounding landscape. In contrast, I started out photographing elevators in wide angle shots that also include the surrounding environment, but gradually became more interested in near and close-up views. Even in the widest views of elevators in this portfolio, the surroundings are incidental to the structure itself. The portfolio favors closer views of the graphical and abstract compositions of patterns and shadows that can be found in these structures.
Perhaps it seems odd to speak of architectural details when thinking of grain elevators since they are such utilitarian structures, but that is what many of these photographs are about. I approach photographing elevators much as someone would explore the architectural features of buildings designed with artistic beauty foremost in mind, such as those by Frank Gehry or the great cathedrals of Europe. In contrast to buildings designed primarily to make an architectural statement, elevators are more about function than form. Yet the wide variety of elevator sculptural shapes and textures, as well as the play of shadows across the structures provides as rich a source of images as any Gehry building or cathedral that I’ve seen.
*Gohlke, Frank (1992). Measure of Emptiness: Grain Elevators in the American Landscape. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
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