Mark Power: Things Being Made
With photographs taken over 27 years across 23 countries, the book Fashion by Mark Power reveals the hidden spaces where things are built rather than displayed. Taking its title from the verb “to fashion”, to make, assemble, construct, the book directs the attention toward the backstage of production.
By Gaia Squarci. Photographs by Mark Power
Using a large format camera for most photographs, Mark Power works in empty architectural spaces, quarries and factories, shooting construction machinery and tools. Prosaic subjects turn into images charged with subtle irony, wonder, and the feeling of entering forbidden spaces.
The project began with his sustained documentation of the construction of the Millennium Dome in London between 1997 and 2000, which saw him returning to the site more than one hundred times. It recalls a near vanished tradition in which a single photographer follows a monumental undertaking from beginning to completion.
For this and subsequent commissions, Mark Power insisted on full creative independence. This freedom allowed him to turn assignments into a long term body of work, building an archive of his own vision over time. The sequencing of the book resists chronology and avoids captions. The images progress through visual association, an approach he began refining during a 2018 Magnum Photos Live Lab in Lisbon, influenced by the landmark book Evidence (1977), by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan.
The book FASHION is published by GOST and available at the price of €90.
