Mark Power's 'Fashion': Industrial Process Over Product

Mark Power's new photobook 'Fashion' (GOST Books) documents industrial sites worldwide—quarries, mines, steel mills, tanneries—focusing on processes rather than finished products. The 500+ page, six-pound volume took seven years to assemble with editor Stuart Smith, sequencing images by color, form, and light rather than chronology or geography. Power, now in his sixties, began this project after photographing the Millennium Dome construction in East London (1997), gaining access by citing 19th-century documentary traditions and photographers like Darius Kinsey and Lewis Hine. The book omits captions, an homage to the 1970s photo book 'Evidence' by California engineering firms. Subjects include a Eurovision-like arena stage, an Airbus rollout ceremony, and Dubai towers, but many scenes remain anonymous, with chalky palettes and globalized industrial aesthetics. Power's approach contrasts with Bernd and Hilla Becher's deadpan grids; he finds domestic familiarity in machinery (e.g., a tarpaulin on a ship propeller like dirty laundry) and wry drama in nature-infrastructure collisions (maple leaves in security fences). Human figures are scarce, often replaced by gloves or clad in PPE, lending a post-apocalyptic feel. One image treats a worker's broken arm with formal attention to the plaster cast. The book ultimately serves as a monument to making, not a warning about automation.