Artist Christoph Gielen has created a work of art that we consider to be both beautiful, terrifying, and hugely important. The book Ciphers: Decoding the Growth Machine collects his photographic aerial studies of infrastructure in its relation to land use in the United States. The fascinatingly abstract images reveal society of immense technological prowess but with little understanding of its own environment, or way humans want or need to live in the 21st century. While his images span the entire country, we were especially struck by his beautiful images of Southern California freeways, as the invoke the complex and problematic relationship we have to our car-obsessed city and culture. We reached Gielen by email to discuss sprawl, his techniques, goals, and equipment, and of course his favorite taco spot...
Your images can appear as abstractions, but in many ways they are the opposite of that as they are specific locations. The developments are"planned" and "cookie-cutter" but also precise places on earth. Have you come to notice distinct regional characteristics?
Variances in neighborhood planning commonly show along socio-economic lines – but less so regionally. Most anywhere, places with sprawl tend to express themselves as clusters of single-use family homes, and always a car-ride dependent distance away from everywhere. Their architectural expression is one of predictable standardization that we’re all familiar with.
Talking about sprawl isn’t new – but I hope my method for addressing it is.