This article originates from the catalog Industrilandskap Grenland,
published by Per Berntsen, 2002.
English translation by Ulrikke Berg.
Few buildings types have achieved a stronger symbolic value within both culture and the common consciousness throughout the past 300 years than the factory. It is perhaps only the church building, the House of God, that has a similar immediate element of recognition. The factory became a notion during the Industrial Revolution, when it became a symbol of a country’s wealth and power, of the supremacy of the Europeans, and the gap between rich and poor, civilized and primitive.
As such, for the first 100 years, the factory was predominantly a positive symbol, but from the middle of the 1800s, the quest for profit, and the exploitation of the workers had become so extreme that the factories became the breeding ground for all the great revolutions that have made their mark on the world in the past 150 years.
After the First World War, a wartorn Europe was to be rebuilt, and industry became once again a positive term, especially in totalitarian regimes, such as the Soviet Union and Germany, but also in the country which had won the leading role in the world community after the war: the USA. It was hardly a coincidence that when the famous American magazine LIFE released its first issue, the cover photograph was of The Grand Coulee Dam, photographed by Margaret Bourke-White.
In Norway as well, the industrial surge had begun in the interwar years, especially in connection with the large rivers and waterfalls. Telemark is one of the counties that was developed first, especially Rjukan, Notodden, and the Grenland area. Rjukan and Notodden were mainly developed before the Second World War, while the Grenland area achieved its greatest industrial growth after the war. This took place in the materialistic optimistic atmosphere of rebuilding that left its mark on the first decades after the war, but this optimism soured at some point in the mid 1960s, when one became aware of the environmental consequences of the industry. Not only did the industry and its owners represent a clear opposition to an increasingly more politically conscious youth culture, but the factories were also health hazards, and ugly to behold.
How ugly were these factories?
Factories are, like churches, built according to specific criteria of use. The church has its steeple that rises toward heaven, the factory has its chimney that churns out smoke. The factory has the production hall with silent workers, the church has its ship with a reverent congregation. The church has its altar and priest, the factory has the director’s office, not to mention that whereas the church has its pulpit, the factory has its marketing section. Similar to the Nidaros Cathedral creating the basis of trade for Trondheim, postwar industry created an economic foundation for innumerous, and until then, poor municipalities. The difference is only that where the church creates spirit, the factory creates things, and is therefore more in tune with its time than the church.
But now, at the end of the industrial era in the prosperous countries of the Western world, the factories are left almost as unused as the churches, but not nearly as protected by the supporters of culture.
We have seen many, and good examples of books and other kinds of documentation on the churches. The Nidaros Cathedral alone has been the subject of tenfolds magnificent publications, with more to come. Famous photographers have shown us the cathedral’s wonders, while the industrial building has crumbled with time. Not only have the buildings been demolished, they have also been restructured, rebuilt, and changed until the unrecognizable without anyone caring, unless it should bear economical consequences.
Industrial Landscape Grenland is an attempt to show us, who live here, and others, the special esthetic that exists in industrial architecture. This is an architecture which seems raw, functionalistic, and brutal, but it may be that our perception of the building type is colored by our knowledge of what kind of buildings they are, and what they produce of pollution and human toil.
I grew up in a city devoid of any heavy industry, and my first meeting with Porsgrunn and the factory complex at Herøya, was quite a revelation. The size. The light. The massiveness. But most of all, the power.
I have known Per Berntsen’s work since the end of the 1970s, and have followed his production from a relatively romantic view of a waterfall in Eggedal, to this series of industrial landscapes. It may seem like a big leap, but ultimately it all amounts to the same: Lines, shapes, “what is there”, the subject’s specific esthetic and intrinsic qualities.
Per Berntsen has done projects on architecture earlier, first and foremost with a series of photographs of the typical architecture of Rjukan, but also commissioned projects on modern architecture. The difference is that compared to these projects, the photographs in Industrial Landscape Grenland are not meant to be educational. We do not learn anything from the photographs about what is produced, or how it is produced, and not a human soul is to be seen.
The buildings and constructions are simply present, against a blank, quiet sky, and that is enough. The pictures are full of details, but the details merge, and become subordinate to the whole. There are light constructions in a deserted square, an office building, silos of shiny steel. They all become redefined as esthetic objects. There is the play of light and shadows on cubes and cylinders, long pipelines that come from nowhere, and disappear into nowhere, concrete and metal; Industry.
The subject matter is treated in the same manner that he treats his nature photographs. He has made many series from his home municipality Sigdal, and other places. They are pictures of what many perceive as “boring” landscapes, with vast mountain plateaus, small mountain spruces in snow, and heathery hills. They are perhaps made in an attempt to reach through and beyond the landscapes we are taught to appreciate - the spectacular and magnificent landscapes of tourism.
It is like walking in nature. It is not always natural to raise ones head to see the big picture, one sees instead the path ahead, one sees the marsh fifty meters away, and the tree that one has to walk around. It becomes a personal wandering through a landscape that is similar to all other landscapes, but that is absolutely unique and site specific.
He treats the industrial landscape the same way. It is without doubt recognizable as such, for anyone who has ever seen a factory. He gives us no overview, no opportunity to get reoriented, but splits the large complexes into small units. The proportions falter, and the perspective leads us into a landscape that is man made, alien to man, and where man is absent. Coincidence seems to abound, and yet there is a logical structure, meaning and consequence, something that we find in the natural landscape. With these pictures, Per Berntsen has set a new standard for how the industrial landscape can be interpreted, that is up to par with his presentation of the natural landscape. It is last, and not least, a question of the gaze, of the eye that beholds.
Beauty is there. Always.