Description
Hw 8
Concept Book and Design by Robin Uleman
At the end of 2019, the Hemweg Power Plant in Amsterdam was decommissioned. ‘Hw8’ – or HW8, as the plant is known to its staff – is a documentary photo book about this last fully coal-fired power plant in the Netherlands.
The book reveals the hidden world behind the power socket. The closed colossus next to the A10 highway harbors a complex and dangerous environment where everything revolves around the intimate relationship between humans and machines. In the presence of this colossus, with its immense boiler at the heart, encased in a claustrophobic network of pipes, conveyor belts, stairs, walkways, tanks, and turbines, the photographer is a mere speck.
He is allowed to observe for half a year and portrays the extensive machinery and its inhabitants: from the almost otherworldly coal fields to the laboratory; the control room; the workshop and the turbine house; to the 175-meter-high chimney. By the time the book ends in the locker rooms, we have come to know the people who all have something to say about their plant, about the living entity it proves to be with all its quirks and caprices. Even for those who have worked there for half their lives, no day is the same – the plant never fully reveals itself.
This inscrutable, living, and fragmented nature is the starting point for both the design and the edit. The story is constructed as a driving stream of images that begins with the raw coal (C), followed by the power plant as it transforms the coal into electricity, fly ash, gypsum, SO2, NOx, and CO2. ‘Hw8’ seems to fit within this series of chemical formulas as a title. The camera zooms in and out, the images are edited cinematically, and the page numbers at the top emphasize the progress of the process. Regularly, the focus shifts to a specific phenomenon hidden behind a fold-out page, enhancing the feeling of disorientation and the sometimes absurd presence of humans within their own creation.
After completing my project “Shelter” in 2010, I hadn’t visited Calais for several years. However, the escalating refugee crisis in 2015 compelled me to return. Upon arriving in Calais, I was shocked by the transformation. Where I once saw only a handful of huts nestled in the forest, I now found hundreds scattered across a much larger area. From that point forward, I frequently traveled from Amsterdam to Calais to document the evolving situation. In a remarkably short period, I witnessed an organically growing city rise and fall. I meticulously chronicled every step of this process, capturing a phenomenon previously unseen in Europe: the emergence of a shantytown in the heart of the continent.
The book “Ville de Calais,” which I co-created with designer Robin Uleman, received the prestigious Prix du Livre in Arles in 2017 and the Dutch Photo Book award in 2019.
This work was on display in the following exhibitions:
- Galerie Bart: Transit
- The Great Photography Special 2020
- Unseen 2019
- Foam, Amsterdam 2016
Concept Book and Design by Robin Uleman
At the end of 2019, the Hemweg Power Plant in Amsterdam was decommissioned. ‘Hw8’ – or HW8, as the plant is known to its staff – is a documentary photo book about this last fully coal-fired power plant in the Netherlands.
The book reveals the hidden world behind the power socket. The closed colossus next to the A10 highway harbors a complex and dangerous environment where everything revolves around the intimate relationship between humans and machines. In the presence of this colossus, with its immense boiler at the heart, encased in a claustrophobic network of pipes, conveyor belts, stairs, walkways, tanks, and turbines, the photographer is a mere speck.
He is allowed to observe for half a year and portrays the extensive machinery and its inhabitants: from the almost otherworldly coal fields to the laboratory; the control room; the workshop and the turbine house; to the 175-meter-high chimney. By the time the book ends in the locker rooms, we have come to know the people who all have something to say about their plant, about the living entity it proves to be with all its quirks and caprices. Even for those who have worked there for half their lives, no day is the same – the plant never fully reveals itself.
This inscrutable, living, and fragmented nature is the starting point for both the design and the edit. The story is constructed as a driving stream of images that begins with the raw coal (C), followed by the power plant as it transforms the coal into electricity, fly ash, gypsum, SO2, NOx, and CO2. ‘Hw8’ seems to fit within this series of chemical formulas as a title. The camera zooms in and out, the images are edited cinematically, and the page numbers at the top emphasize the progress of the process. Regularly, the focus shifts to a specific phenomenon hidden behind a fold-out page, enhancing the feeling of disorientation and the sometimes absurd presence of humans within their own creation.
Edition 750
pages 202
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