Nathan Harger

Following in the hallowed tradition pioneered by German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, Nathan Harger creates starkly expressive black-and-white compositions that explore the industrial American landscape through the lens of a camera. The factories, cranes, power plants, bridges and highways he shoots represent this country's industrialized forms of production. But rather than engage critically with those subjects to offer social commentary about a capitalist, consumer society, Harger approaches image-making with a markedly formal, aesthetic approach—and his harmonious compositions explore the beauty that can be derived from industrial structures when they are treated exclusively as graphic elements.

Harger's earliest works directly referenced the “typologies” of disappearing German architecture created by the Bechers by featuring photographic grids that echo the dynamic visual experience of city living. Now, his more recent images demonstrate an evolution in style and method that aligns him more closely with the great Abstract Expressionist photographer Aaron Siskind, celebrated for transmuting formerly familiar objects and locations into striking abstractions that are no longer legible as what they are. Rather than signify in figurative terms, Harger's images evoke by way of gesture and form—photographic equivalents of Franz Kline's dramatic, spontaneous monochromes and the reductive dynamism of Robert Motherwell's spare compositions.

Courtesy of Sarah Hasted