Love them Factories

June 20, 2007 9:33 PM

Koujou Moe. Photographs of factories from a blog, Koujou-moe na hibi (Factory-Loving Days) (Japanese). Also available in book form. See also, Deep Inside by Joe Nishizawa.
posted by misozaki (11 comments total)

These are great! I have a long-standing love affair with factories myself! I've always wished I could just wander through some of those places, must be quite the visual/aural experience. The closest I ever came was visiting the old Sloss Furnace, a decommissioned iron and steel foundry in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. It's quiet now, but very interesting to see, quite beautiful. When I was a kid we'd pass by sometimes at night and you could see the molten steel pouring out of huge buckets and into glowing troughs. It was quite a sight.

Anyway, to anyone visiting B'ham, I'd highly recommend a trip to Sloss. And of course, to the city's very own god of iron, Vulcan.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:54 PM on June 20, 2007

http://www.flickr.com/groups/industrial_landscapes_and_structures/pool/
posted by geos at 10:16 PM on June 20, 2007

also this is a great book with lots of great photos and very intelligent perspective.
posted by geos at 10:18 PM on June 20, 2007

Thanks for the additional links, flapjax and geos. I love looking at factories, too! These photos reminded me of when I was younger and had a silly amount of time on my hands, and some friends and I would drive down to Kawasaki at night to just look at the lighted up factories down there. Kind of like real-life Akira.

The guy who runs the blog was recently on television being interviewed about his factory-viewing hobby, and he said something along the lines of "I think the beauty of factories comes from the fact that they weren't built to be looked at. Their existence is purely functional, so their beauty is unintentional and unaffected."

This factory-viewing hobby is often featured along with "damu moe" (dam lovers, or fetish), or people who love to look at dams. I couldn't find any interesting links related to this hobby except this Japanese site by the guy who put out this book, but the photographs featured in the blog itself (the sixth orange bar on the left side) aren't all that interesting. This site is a bit more interesting, I think, if you're into this sort of thing.
posted by misozaki at 1:09 AM on June 21, 2007

Tangentially related: Moeic feelings for industrial products in factories. (Scroll down for commercials.) Each commercial features a small girl claiming to literally be some industrial product or material, and then the tagline explaining that to Kobelco, their products and materials are that adorable. Somehow it strongly reminds me of Gravity's Rainbow.
posted by No-sword at 7:11 AM on June 21, 2007

Super-duper links!
posted by KokuRyu at 8:10 AM on June 21, 2007

For a little context make sure you look at the pivotal work of Bernd and Hilla Becher (useful essay), although for the contemporary 'glamour' of the industrial landscape Dan Holdsworth's work is closer and certainly worth looking at, too.
posted by blindsam at 8:28 AM on June 21, 2007

Taking pictures of factories and power plants is great but these days you might end up getting hassled by security for being a potential terror suspect.

Love the pics.
posted by Lex Tangible at 8:31 AM on June 21, 2007

Great post. I especially love the title of the blog ("萌える工場達")!
posted by armage at 9:09 AM on June 21, 2007

This... is a concept artist's mecca.

Thanks, what an awesome link!
posted by zoogleplex at 10:28 AM on June 21, 2007

Oh, and previously on MeFi, all this here.
posted by zoogleplex at 10:48 AM on June 21, 2007