Weerstanden in een electriciteitscentrale op onbekende locatie in de Verenigde Staten 1936

This is a photograph by Wouter Cool, titled *Weerstanden in een electriciteitscentrale op onbekende locatie in de Verenigde Staten*, or, *Resistors in a power plant at an unknown location in the United States*. The palette here is a straightforward, graphic black and white, and the marks are those of photography – the indexical trace of light. Cool is interested in form here, the repetitions of those cube-like resistors, each filled with a grid of holes, receding into the distance. The light isn’t exactly dramatic; there is nothing romantic about it, nothing overtly expressive. The artist here is interested in documenting these objects, in the shapes they make, in the way they relate to one another. I’m reminded of the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who photographed industrial structures like water towers and silos, looking for the aesthetic in the functional. Like the Bechers, Cool asks us to see the beauty in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary.