Mark Steinmetz – ATL

 

 

For such impersonal architecture, the environments of airports are rife with sentiment and emotion. When I say that they are impersonal, like much of the Twentieth Century’s functional public meeting spaces, they are often streamlined and defined by their sameness. The function has to override form in such spaces, which disallows individuality. There are exceptions. There always are.

 

I think of Charles de Gaulle CDG in Paris offhand. Designed primarily by Paul Andreu in the 1960s, with an additional terminal added in the early 1980s, the airport is a mix of futuristic design and brutalism with radial departure gates and integrated landing strips that cross over public highways, creating an intense proximity on arrival. The space inside feels like it was meant to be a version of the Jetsons airport with its moving inclined walkways shrouded in glass that makes one think of moving through an aquarium as much as space. It has been the subject of an incredible photobook CDG by JH Engström, published in 2008. I am often reminded of the opening image of Chris Marker’s La Jetée from 1962 when I think of CDG. There is also an unmistakable presence of J.G. Ballard and Mark Fisher’s ghosts haunting the space despite the deceased’s geography across the channel.

 

 

Berlin’s Templehof airport, now defunct, also offers an interesting site as what is relevant about the small inner-city airport is less about its form than its historical function. Built by the Reich in the 1920s, and redesigned by the Nazis in the 1930s,  the airport served as one of Albert Speer’s visionary gates for Germany; his never realized re-envisioning of Berlin as a center of neo-classical design and the center of the thousand-year Reich. The airport was used in the post-war years as an airlift for food and supplies to stave off Soviet takeover during the formation of the Cold War. It was shuttered in 2008 amidst public outcry. In 2015, it was also home to a large number of refugees during the European migrant crisis who used the defunct space as a point of refuge, ensuring a beautiful irony from its origins to its exit.

 

Tegel Airport, also in Berlin, is an airport that lives in the public consciousness as an essential air travel hub. In 2020, it closed its doors as the last flight departed from the tarmac. As a significant site of German transport, the Tegel airport has also made for two (if not more) photobooks about its architecture and the general malaise of its closure. Robert Rieger and Felix Brüggemann’s Flughafen Tegel presents a topical goodbye to the airport. Andreas Gehrke, working simultaneously, suggests a slightly different approach to a denied utopianism through the abandoned architecture of the airport in his book Flughafen Berlin-Tegel.

 

 

I mention the airport in the photobook context as they seem pretty rife for investigation. So much of our travel and how the world operates has to do with the patterns of flights. As a species, we are prone to moving away from our roots in large numbers using the airports as teleportation architecture where we enter one defined, if manicured hub, only to exit in another. The taken-for-granted effect of flights over the past 100 years has become quotidian. Although I have not covered the whole gamut of airport photography books, Harry Gruyaert’s Last Call and Søren Solkær’s Passage are two of my recent memories I have not elaborated on; I find the rough outline of airport books quite interesting. In some ways, one would expect many books given how often we travel and how much time is spent in these spaces. Having shot in airports, one thing that comes to mind in the post-9/11 world is that airports have uncompromised levels of security, and they feel, at least to me, like places where one should not photograph, which might explain the lack of people in many of the books above, Gruyaert’s being an exception.

 

With Mark Steinmetz’s new Nazraelli book ATL, there is a different sensation when viewing the airport and its residents. As with much of Mark’s work, there is tremendous empathy for the people he photographs. He often finds solitary moments of wistful contemplation in his subjects or an endearing embrace between people. There is a blatant romanticism and humanity in Mark’s work that makes his portraiture alluring and gentle. He asks us to remember that in the hustle and bustle of the world, there is still time for care and acknowledgment of one another. The airport and its environment are no less an opportunity to make work that reflects this trajectory in his photography.

 

 

What strikes me most about ATL, outside of the general condition of Mark’s photographs, is the look of expectation on several of the faces of Mark’s subjects. There is a sense of waiting involved in many, which is to be expected, but I find the rare glimpse of expectation and wonderment most interesting in the portraits. This is followed by an exception sequencing of the work from the point of departure to landing, then departure and landing, followed by a glimpse of the ATL business of flying as seen from the street level. A series of red-eye nighttime images prevail toward the end, splitting the difference between the soft daytime light into something else entirely. What that something else is feels clandestine in respects. I am reminded of Trevor Paglen’s early work with extreme telegraphy recording even more extreme renditions. There is also a cinematic reference to Michael Mann’s 1995 film Heat, where the two ant/protagonists meet for their final duel at night under the airstrip. Of course, there are many other airport films to enlist in comparison…

 

For fans of Steinmetz, this will be a necessity. I suggest this because it occupies a place on the shelf with all of his other titles. It feels fresh but very much in line with his ever-expanding list of publications. Though I enjoy it when Mark deviates to different publishers, there is something like a well-fitting glove when another Nazraeli collaboration is hatched. It presents as if on some continuum that is never directly spelled out, but the sensibilities of both parties and their tandem efforts, perhaps knowingly, create well-thought-out and crafted books that do not ask too much from the viewer in over-contextualizing Mark’s work, which does not need much, in terms of context. Mark’s work succeeds in thoughtful sequencing and a container that does not distract from the work. There is enough deviation in the book to make a slightly different Steinmetz title; if that is all you need, then it is worth picking up. It is another in a line of successful Steinmetz/Nazraeli books.

 

 

 

Mark Steinmetz

ATL

Nazraeli

 

For news on our upcoming workshop with Mark…

 

Mark Steinmetz Brad Feuerhelm

A Moveable Feast: An Italian Journey

  October 24-30: Milan, Tuscany, and Rome

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