Experiencing Post-Industrial Ruins

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Experiencing Post-Industrial Ruins

Wolschleger, Justin

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10429/2170

Date: 2021-05-18

Abstract:

This thesis proposes that post-industrial ruins are fascinating both through the perception of the ruin and its representation of image in photography. Our perception of the ruin is at its greatest when the post-industrial sublime is experienced. This is a sensation that can be felt across multiple realms of space, time, context, and reality. Each realm holds variables that satiate the mind of the viewer of the ruin to a threshold at which they pass the point of sublimity. As for ruin photography, the correlation of change and time has made these ruins a subject for repeated interest, allowing photographers to return to the ruin and represent its image many times, each in a unique way. The purpose of this thesis is to bring relevance to the experience of post-industrial sublimity, which can be met by surpassing thresholds that exist across multiple realms, and that photographs of such ruins hold interest in the correlation of time and change that causes repetition for the representation of image.

Description:

Urban explorers and ruin photographers have visited locations such as the Fisher Body Plant of Detroit to seek a unique fascination with ruins of the post-industrial landscape for the last 25 years. Whether viewers seek to experience a sense of sublimity that this lower picturesque holds or they intend to capture the image of decay in photos, the post-industrial ruin uniquely creates attraction through what is meant to be repulsive. The post-industrial sublime is a super-sensible faculty of reason1 that we view ourselves in relation to the superiority of nature over structures that resemble humanity’s achievements since the industrial revolution. This thesis proposes that viewers experience a post-industrial sublime across all realms of space, time, context, and reality when variables of each realm satiate the mind enough to pass a threshold. Teleologically asking what the realm is, contains, and does to the mind can determine the viewer’s faculty for sublimity. The continual decay of post-industrial ruins, and our temporal relation to that time, is cause for repetition of experiencing the ruin. Exploring ruin photography, it is implied that the correlation of time and change in these ruins attracts repeated exploration of the ruin. While this is an inherent quality of “action causing reaction,” the post-industrial ruin also allows a unique ability to represent the image of the ruin through each photo that is captured. Each time that a ruin is photographed, a new image is created through different conditions. The purpose of this thesis is to explore post-industrial sublimity and the metaphysics of ruin photography. The unique fascination with post-industrial ruins has repeatedly attracted explorers and photographers to both experience the ruin and represent its image. This thesis proposes that the fascination with post-industrial ruins exists in the experience of the viewer in relation to the ruin through a post-industrial sublimity that can be achieved when variables of the four realms of space, time, context, and reality satiate the mind to pass a threshold. The fascination with capturing photos of the ruin has to do with the inherent quality of repeated interest that these ruins possess through the correlation of change and time as well as the ability for representation of the image of ruins.

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