DAM

Since 2010, photographer Carsten Meier has been documenting dams across the U.S. and Europe. Embedded within the surrounding landscape, these purely functional architectures develop a unique aesthetic with the appearance of manmade mountain ranges. In their imposing massiveness these structures at once serve as monuments to humanity's will to shape nature and demonstrate the dubiousness of its value. Consistently photographed from a one-point perspective and rendered in large format, in over 100 images a typology of dam architecture is presented. Apart from Hoover Dam, Meier also photographed dams known from popular movies, such as, the Contra Dam (from James Bond: Golden Eye) or the Edertalsperre (Eder Dam) (from Dam Buster).