Tankstelle [Gas Station]

Using a large-format camera and available artificial light, Faulhaber photographs newly constructed architectural spaces-shopping malls, nightclubs, factories, sports arenas, offices, and apartments-just after they have been completed. Unpopulated and bearing no traces of everyday use, the environments are pristine and eerily hermetic. This view of a brightly lit gas station at night, with its disorienting sense of scale and immaculate newness, might easily be mistaken for a computer-generated model in an architect's studio. Surprisingly, Faulhaber achieves this effect through traditional photographic means rather than digital manipulation. His photographs' saturated colors and cool formal elegance heighten the inorganic beauty of the modern built environment, offering a lush yet ominous vision of postindustrial alienation.