Diamond Plate, Duluth c. 1961

Ralston Crawford made this photograph, Diamond Plate, Duluth, out of gelatin silver. It’s a photograph but it’s almost like a collage. He’s found these scraps of metal and then arranged them, or maybe found them already arranged. There's something about the textures that really grab me. The diamond plate itself, with its regular pattern, contrasting against the smooth, worn surfaces of the other metal pieces. And then that crisp black and white, everything reduced to stark shapes and shadows. You can almost feel the grit and the weight of these objects. Look at the way the light catches the edges, creating these sharp, almost painful lines. Crawford was really interested in the way industry shapes the landscape, and you can see that here. It reminds me a bit of some of the German photographers like the Bechers, who also documented industrial structures with such precision and clarity. It’s a form of abstraction, which encourages multiple interpretations over any definitive meaning.