Zachary Elliott


Design Projects

  1. Temporal Lea-ping
  2. Embracing the Ruin
  3. Archiving the Ruin [WIP]
  4. A Torrington Square Adventure


Research

  1. Rusty Rebels
  2. Encountering the Riverine Park Nexus
  3. Green Space in Denver
  4. Molten Wastelands


Photography

  1. Architecture
  2. Landscape
  3. Urban
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MLA Landscape Architecture at The Bartlett                    BA Geography (First Class) at Oxford                        Freelance Photographer                    

© Zachary Elliott 2024

Rusty Rebels


MLA Landscape Architecture / Thesis



This thesis critiques the aesthetic norms of contemporary ruin photography, defining them as ‘neo-picturesque’, the picturesque all over again. It explores what alternative photographic practices could emerge from ‘unconventional’ sites of ruination, ‘Rusty Rebels’, that lack affordances to be easily aestheticised through the neo-picturesque.

After first establishing the aesthetic codes of the neo-picturesque through an analysis of urban explorers’ photographs of Millennium Mills, the thesis examines photographic fieldwork from two sites in the Thames Estuary: the partially demolished ruins of Stambridge Mills and the never-completed oil refinery at Canvey Wick. These sites frustrate the neo-picturesque photographer, forcing alternative photographic methods, and inviting different kinds of stories to be told. At Stambridge Mills, the thesis shifts scales to tell stories about absent buildings through the photography of demolition residues. At Canvey Wick, a ‘ruin in reverse’, temporal dislocation focusses the storytelling on the pioneer plants that grow in this temporally suspended landscape.

This thesis argues that engaging with ‘Rusty Rebels’ invites the diversification of ruin photography practices, going beyond detached spectation towards a more critical engagement with post-industrial ruination.

Read the thesis