I'm not trying to make out like I'm some kind of mysterious urbex badass. Lost Collective isn't about me. It's about the places I shoot and even more about the connection that the people have to the sites.
Broadsheet
On the LC archive.
01 Shimizusawa Thermal Power PlantYubari2016
ISO 5001/250f/9.017mm
Series · 10 prints
Shimizusawa Thermal Power Plant
01
ABOUT THIS SERIES
Series story
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
Shimizusawa Thermal Power Plant ran in the Shimizusawa district of Yubari, on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, from 1926 to 1991. It was built and operated by the Hokkaido Colliery and Steamship Company, known locally as Hokutan, alongside the coal mines that supplied its fuel. It was reportedly the largest privately owned power generation plant in Japan at peak.
Initial output was six thousand kilowatts in 1926. By the early 1960s, after a pulverised-fuel upgrade, the main plant pushed seventy-four and a half thousand kilowatts and an auxiliary plant added forty-nine and a half thousand more by burning natural gas captured from the surrounding coal workings. The Shimizusawa Dam, built in 1940, supplied cooling water to the plant and a small two-thousand-kilowatt hydroelectric generator alongside it. Hokutan operated the plant for sixty-five years before closure in 1991. Demolition was planned but halted in 2011 by the Shimizusawa Project, which has been reopening parts of the site for reservation-only tours and small-scale art events ever since.
Metropolis Japan (Hokutan Shimizusawa Power Plant) and Atlas Obscura (Shimizusawa Thermal Power Plant)
02
TIMELINE
Chronology
1926
1940
1960
1991
2011
03
PRINTS
Prints in this series
Hand-signed limited editions, printed from the original RAW file. Editions run from 100 down to 25 and are not reissued once they sell through.
04
ABOUT THE PRINTS
How they’re made
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
06
PRESS
In the press
Often I'd find myself looking at the machines and architecture and challenging myself to find one single object designed purely for aesthetics. Craftsmanship made way for efficiency in engineering long before I'd even left school.
The Guardian
On the LC archive.
People talk about what it was like to work or stay in these places, who they knew, what they did, how great the Christmas parties were, that store man nobody liked, what all the different machines were, how they worked and what became of them.
Broadsheet
On the LC archive.