David Lynch: The Factory Photographs

By Nat Lucas

A room is, say, 9 by 12, but when you're introducing sound to it, you can create a space that's giant, hearing things outside the room or feeling certain through a vent, and then there are abstract sounds that are like music. They give emotions and different moods. (David Lynch 1999)It may seem counterintuitive to take an auditory approach to a photographic exhibition, but as the artist under consideration is David Lynch, stepping off the travelator of convention seems acceptable. Heard in isolation, the multichannel sound composition by the artist,' could be described as the noise that your brain blots out in the course of everyday experience. Loosely pulsating brass drones are layered with occasional octaves, fifths and harmonics in the upper frequencies. We hear wind across open pipes interspersed with the chippings and banging of hot and cold metal. This is the sound of the shadow of an industrial age. It is the music of everything that has been cancelled.This soundscape frames Lynch's uniformly sized, monochrome images perfectly. In true cinematic fashion it provides another dimension to the mise en scne he presents of decaying abandoned factories. Those familiar with his films (such as Eraserhead' and Dune') will not be surprised to learn that he began to take these pictures while scouting locations for film shoots. With this exhibition what was previously a backdrop becomes the focus of attention, the used up factories now take the lead roles in creating an atmosphere of tension.

This is a post-industrialist landscape embodied in a range of locations such as Lodz, Berlin, New York and Northern England. Husks and kernels of buildings decay, their walls rupture and forgotten sills are covered in debris. One door opens onto darkness while another gapes onto an unspoken void. Obsolete machines cling to walls with twisted edges like sordid metal lips. Skylights are distant, always out of reach. Nature scurries to wild the ruins and reclaim the ground. Human life has been deleted.

Eight photographs form a study of glass panes, all either shattered, vicious toothed or absent. The window frames bring to mind rhythms of Mondrian squares but somehow in the negative. Only where panes are missing can we see a few stark twigs gesturing upwards.

Three works Untitled (England) late 1980s early 1990s, provide an alternative to the heavy shadows of the rest of the exhibition. Here pylons stride across electricity farms and bulbous smoke stacks still breathe (above). Lynch managed to chase around the North barely a wisp ahead of the demolition crews. Within the frames there is space for a glimpse of a green, though less than entirely pleasant, land. Industry is dwindling but has not yet been fully disassembled.

In his Darwin College Lecture Life in Ruins,' the writer Robert Macfarlane suggests, Ruins offer niches for narrative. The Factory Photographs' offer a palimpsest narrative where industry is being overwritten by nature. The story is one of a shifting population and a change of power. As Lynch remarks, Every work talks' to you, and if you listen to it, it will take you places you never dreamed of.

David Lynch: The Factory Photographs at thePhotographers' Gallery to 30th March 2014.

Photograph: Image 2, David Lynch, Untitled (England), late 1980s/early 1990s.

Archival gelatin-silver print. 11 x 14 inches. All photographs in an edition of 11. Collection of the artist.