[AEG Turbine]
With blunt economy, this state-of-the art electric turbine is rendered in cyanotype, a popular process for documenting industry. Requiring no darkroom or sensitive silver, it offered working photographers a quick means of making prints with minimal fuss. Iron salts produce its signature palette, here shading the cylinder’s sculptural body in a striated gradient of blues. This photograph was likely produced in-house, in the soaring new turbine hall of the German electric firm AEG. But all trace of the space is masked out of the negative—ostensibly scrubbed for legibility’s sake (select trade secrets notwithstanding). In its place is an absolute void. At once strictly objective and strategically doctored, this photograph augurs an emerging genre of corporate realism, as candid as any industrial report.
Artwork Details
- Title: [AEG Turbine]
- Artist: Unknown (German)
- Date: ca. 1910
- Medium: Cyanotype
- Dimensions: Image: 9 1/8 × 6 7/8 in. (23.2 × 17.4 cm)
Sheet: 9 1/4 in. × 7 in. (23.5 × 17.9 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Anonymous Gift, in honor of Virginia McBride, 2024
- Object Number: 2024.71
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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