Photographer Spencer Lowell’s new monograph Futures Past brings together a stunning selection of images on the theme of technology. Lowell’s editorial work is not just about chronicling innovations in processes and manufacturing, but also the ways in which humans interact with emerging tech.
The New York-based photographer drew on material from shoots undertaken around the world between 2007 and 2024, mostly focusing on the USA but with forays into territories like Chile, Norway and Japan. The assignments cover the awe-inspiring – the launch of the Curiosity Mars Rover at Cape Canaveral in 2011 and a view of an experimental ‘fire tornado’ in a Montana lab – to the quirky and the dystopian – from a ‘Butt Robot’ testing seating in Batesville, Indiana, to an Automated Cow Milking System in the Netherlands. The book was designed by Luminosity Lab.
The introduction by the writer and climate activist Daniel Sherrell frames the work as a true expression of our current age. ‘There are people in these photos, but rarely are there individuals,’ he writes. ‘The technologies are the real individuals, protagonists of their own cryptic story. The photographs capture them on their own terms, in the worlds that they’ve built – worlds that both serve and exclude us.’
Lowell, born and raised in Los Angeles, has made the increasingly volatile staging ground between the natural and artificial worlds his beat. His photographic studies range from studies of nuclear power stations and data centres, through to unflinching close-ups of ocean microplastic, captive dolphins and decommissioned spacecraft. Whether or not they're physically present in his images, the effects both of and on humans are central to his work.
Futures Past, Spencer Lowell, text by Daniel Sherrell, KGP Monolith, $75, KrisGravesProjects.com, @KGPNYC, SpencerLowell.com, @SpencerLowell_