If a city could be likened to the human body, then surely the buildings would be the skeleton - its structure if you will - the physical presence. Water would be the blood, life sustaining, essential and electricity would be the spirit, the energy.
French-Greek photographer, Emmanuel Coupe-Kalomiris has chosen his place of residence, the Greek capital, Athens to examine these electrical synapses and pulses of energy in his new book, simply entitled Electricity.
Navigating a sequence of abstract monochrome images, the lifeforce of the city is traced and highlighted through sparks of inanimate life and bursts of illumination.
Interspersed are power lines, generators and engine details - the organs and limbs - of this sprawling beast of a city.
Somewhat unsurprisingly there is an anonymity of place here and in many respects this could be any metropolis, but just as with the human body, geography is almost rendered futile as the minutiae of what - at first - seems insignificant reveals itself to be fundamental and essential, indeed the city’s physicians and surgeons are glimpsed occasionally and momentarily attending to its ongoing needs and reparations.
The appearance may differ but the "biology" is the same world over.
It is Coupe-Kalomiris’ observational skill that through the inevitable inertia of a still photograph, a sense of movement and urgency is palpable and the notion that even when slumbering the behemoth remains restless.
The artist has captured the city's REM, a display of constant luminous activity.
Maybe Philip K Dick was right after all and something somewhere is indeed dreaming of electric sheep.
Electricity is an exercise in understated elegance. Its luminous yellow cover proudly announces its presence and title but conceals a minimal Swiss bound softcover rich in detail.
It is an absorbing and beguiling guide book that - for this viewer at least - draws parallels between flesh and bone, and metal and stone and is published in an edition of 150 copies by Nearest Truth Editions.
Comments