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Photographer Marc Wilson’s latest monograph looks at the spaces and landscape of post-industrial Britain. In The Edge of Ruin, Wilson gleans an uncanny beauty from land that has been churned up by centuries of process, extraction and exploitation, exploiting the atmospheric haze of typical British weather to give these places an otherworldly, alien feel.
Black Mountain Quarries, Carmarthenshire, from The Edge of Ruin
Hodge Close Quarry, Cumbria, from The Edge of Ruin
To the unfamiliar, these images don’t betray their industrial heritage; it’s only when one delves into the captions and accompanying essays that you realise that these contours and skylines represent the remnants of various industries, from abandoned tracks and spoil heaps, to quarries, mines, and clay works, to irrigation and water supply projects.
Coldberry Lead Mine, Durham, from The Edge of Ruin
Honister Slate Mine and Monkey Shelf, from The Edge of Ruin
For Wilson, the challenge was to document these ‘seemingly benign places’ without romanticism, demonisation or nostalgia. Noting that many of these environments continue to pollute their surroundings, despite their bucolic appearance, Wilson says the images present a ‘version of our own future: a landscape tainted by ruthless exploitation of the world we inhabit.’
‘I walked 1,000km to reach desolate locations that had been underestimated and uninhabited until their riches were exposed,’ he continues, ‘[these are] landscapes that were formed by nature and remoulded in the pursuit of power and wealth. In making this book, I discovered the shadows and impressions of the past.’
Spread from The Last Stand, Marc Wilson
Wilson’s other books include The Last Stand (currently in its fourth reprint), a visual documentation of a journey along the coastlines reshaped by the Second World War. Wilson travelled 23,000 miles to 143 different locations in the UK and Northern Europe, chronicling the decay and remnants of the crumbling fortifications that still stud the dunes, sands and shallow waters of what was once a substantial military bulwark.
‘Photography, Video Game, Landscape’ by Pascal Greco
Landscape from Death Stranding 2, Pascal Greco
A very different take on the post-industrial aesthetic comes from photographer Pascal Greco. On the surface, Photography, Video Game, Landscape appears to be a travelogue through a mix of moody, spectacular and quotidian landscapes.
But this quiet realism is an illusion, for these are all ‘in-game spaces’, captured as part of an increasingly popular trend for chronicling the digital picturesque as part of one’s journey through a game space.
Landscape from Assassin's Creed Shadows, Pascal Greco
‘I travelled to more than ten regions in four years, including Northern California (Cyberpunk 2077), Japan (Assassin's Creed Shadows), Mexico, and Australia (Death Stranding 2),’ Greco says.
The book, which is also accompanied by an ‘in-game film’, Place(s) Space(s), is the artist and avid gamer’s second foray into in-game photography, following 2022’s (sold-out) Place(s), a paean to the world of Hideo Kojima’s cult PlayStation title Death Stranding.
Landscape from Silent Hill 2, Pascal Greco
Greco spent hours during the pandemic exploring Kojima’s reimagining of a futuristic Iceland. The new book brings together vistas from over a dozen games, fabricated realities that are – to many people – more familiar and evocative than real landscapes.
Just as Wilson shows us a world inexorably changed by technology, Greco’s eye captures realms that only technology could have created.
