Peter Essick

Construction Sites | Three years ago, I was photographing an urban, old-growth forest near my home in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I learned to use a drone during that commission to photograph the forest canopy and to show the close location of the forest to the downtown skyscrapers. The genesis of the Construction Sites series came on the half-hour drive to and from my home to the forest.

Along the drive, I saw many construction sites where neighborhoods were being converted to larger mixed-use developments. I thought that the low altitude aerial perspective from a drone would be a new way to document this change. I started by photographing the sites early in the morning or late in the afternoon when there was no work going on. This was mostly for safety reasons, but the light is also more to my liking at these times. I also wanted to emphasis the construction landscape without the workers.

At the start of the project, I noticed that construction sites change very rapidly. If I returned to a site one week later there were new visual opportunities as a result of the construction progress. Using a drone where flight time is limited by battery life, there are many quick visual decisions to be made. A small change in the angle can turn a straightforward workplace documentation into an Abstract Expressionist field of color. I enjoy this challenge and am drawn to the near-abstract qualities of the movement of soil and equipment as well as the technological side of how the concrete, steel and wood come together to create a structure.

Throughout my career, I have focused on nature and environmental subjects. I believe that construction sites are a good indicator for how a society views development, progress and the treatment of the environment. Many of the major environmental issues of our day - climate change, population and economic growth, forever chemicals and sustainability – are incorporated in the design of residential and commercial buildings. I see these temporary construction landscapes as visual metaphors for how we are choosing to create our future. www.peteressick.com