février, 2009

(Image : Città 2000 t. Source : storefrontnews)

(Image : MFO-Park in grüner Seitenansicht. Source : Raderschall Landschaftsarchitekten)

Léo Fabrizio has been taking documentary photographs of Swiss fortified buildings and bunkers for over four years now. At first he shows a number of easy-to-spot buildings, situated next to streets or only partially camouflaged. His work then focuses on the relation between basically shaped buildings and their spectacular natural surrounding. He also searches for more impressive bunkers, concentrating on the way they were camouflaged and shaped so that they almost look like theatres built with typical Helvetian precision. Fabrizio’s aesthetism makes us take a fresh new look at bunkers and see it from a different angle, along with the symbolism of Swiss landscape and this country’s defences.

(Images : Bunkers. Source : Léo Fabrizio)

(Images : ‘Observatory’. Source : HSmade’s photostream)

Small water pumps in existing pot-holes in the road surface. When it rains, small fountains appear.

( Image : Street Fountain. Source : Helmut Smits.)

The Berkeley Pit Lake, located in Butte, Montana, is a part of the largest Federal Superfund site in the United States.  Selective underground mining in the Butte area began in the 1860s.  The Berkeley Pit mine was eventually opened in 1955, when the area surrounding the mine was surface-stripped by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company to allow miners access to the depths of the mountain. The mines were worked until 1982, when the operation was abandoned.  Over the twenty-seven years it was active, the Berkeley Pit Mine produced over one billion tons of ore, including copper, lead, zinc, gold, and manganese, leading to the nickname the Richest Hill on Earth. Once the pit was closed in 1982, groundwater started to fill the pit to the natural groundwater level. Because its water contains high concentrations of metals such as copper and zinc, the Berkeley Pit is listed as a federal Superfund site.

Penguin First edition published in 1975.Cover illustration by Alan Aldridge and Harry Willock.ISBN 0 14 00 3930 9

(source : mjkghk’s Photostream )