Photography, Urbex and the Post-Industrial Landscape

As a photographer and educator who began his career spending his Sunday afternoons exploring the industrial wastelands of 1980s Tyneside I have watched the rise of the contemporary trend in Urbex photography along with the utilization of post industrial spaces as backdrops and locations for photographic production with interest. As a senior lecturer on the Mart and BA(Hons) Photography course at Sheffield Hallam University I have tutored numerous students with interests as diverse as fashion, constructed narrative, landscape and documentary who have appropriated the many post industrial spaces in the city within their work. This short paper will both introduce and consider a range of such work and place it in the context of historical practice in an attempt to identify key elements of this interesting relationship between art and engineering.