Masterworks of Industrial Photography: Exhibitions 2015

Hardcover | 22.6 x 29.6 cm | 666 pp

Electa | 2016 | 9788891810991

The book is a collection of the MAST exhibition of 2015: The first Industry Today exhibition explores the decline of industry and classical industrial photography, the outsourcing of a large number of production units to Asia and the rapid progress of technology. It inspires a reflection on how industrial landscape is represented and illustrates – through the almost impenetrable photographs of Olivo Barbieri, Henrik Spohler, Carlo Valsecchi, Stéphane Couturier, Thomas Struth and Hiroshi Sugimoto – the deep lack of transparency in today’s production processes.

Foto/Industria chronicles the works of Raphaël Dallaporta, Madhuban Mitra & Manas Bhattacharya, Marc Roig Blesa/Rogier Delfos and Óscar Monzón, the young finalists of the GD4PhotoArt prize. The parallel exhibition Album to Book: Italian Industry in 120 Volumes, dedicated to the works of Savina Palmieri, outlines the history of industry and industrial photography in Italy. It shows how the first step was the photo album, followed by the pamphlet and then finally the book. For over a century industry has used photography as a tool for promotion, in the form of photo albums, pamphlets, promotional leaflets and anniversary books.

However the most popular exhibition of 2015 was the retrospective of Anglo-German photographer Emil Otto Hoppé: in collaboration with the Hoppé archives, MAST presented 192 of his previously unpublished industrial photographs showcasing the artist’s deeply romantic and existentialist, sometimes even spiritual, vision of man and his achievements in the context of a pre-existing nature.

Fondazione MAST is an international, cultural and philanthropic institution based on Technology, Art and Innovation. Founded in Bologna in 2013, the Foundation aims to promote projects that leverage identity and creativity in order to develop new ideas and create new connections.