Albert Renger-Patzsch, ‘Bei Oberhausen’, 1931
The post isn’t much more ornate than the smokestacks in the background; the delicate bulb structure seems gently caught between two pincers - the melding of the organic and the technical. Imagined the other way round, it could be a mechanical flower cut at the stem, the crowning ornament to a tree of artificial light. It’s as though the whole power station exists to supply it with energy.
This photograph stands as a testament to ingenuity. But in the absence of all life in the image, the human agency behind that is ambient, implicit. As such, we could be looking at a scene of spontaneous industrial growth, a forest of metal and brick on some strange steampunk planet.