Kaya & Blank's Infrascapes exhibition at Basis Frankfurt explores infrastructure through night photography

Kaya & Blank's exhibition Infrascapes at Basis in Frankfurt, Germany, presents five years of work examining infrastructure beneath neoliberal capitalism. The show combines video with photographic objects, focusing on systems that propel global consumption. A satellite presentation of their Second Nature series appears in Darmstadt, funded by regional collaboration support. The artists' practice centers on night photography, capturing Southern California's light pollution and industrial sites from public grounds without permission. Their Second Nature project documented nearly 1,200 cell towers disguised as trees across Southern California during the pandemic, resulting in a 2022 Kehrer Verlag publication. The artists incorporate actual materials like artificial leaves and Long Beach water into salt prints, creating installations that blend micro and macro scales. Collaborations with writers Deb Chachra and Siobhan Angus provided new perspectives on their work's connection to infrastructure and photography's environmental impact. Kaya & Blank met in San Diego where Işık Kaya earned an MFA from UCSD and Thomas Blank was a German Academic Exchange Service visiting scholar before relocating to Los Angeles.