Industrial Resonances

When we look at an image, we grasp its essence. As Rudolf Arnheim observes, “visual perception does not operate with the mechanical fidelity of a camera, which records everything impartially.” We do not take in every detail; instead, we retain a general framework shaped by dominant features. A few structural elements are enough for an object to appear to us as a coherent whole. Arnheim also reminds us that memory influences perception: traces of familiar forms act as points of reference, so what we see is not confined to the present moment but linked to countless past experiences. In this way, different images with similar forms or structures may be perceived as related entities.

In photography this effect is amplified. Students, amateurs and professionals, steeped in the history of the medium, consciously or unconsciously produce images that repeat patterns, generating almost endless variations of those representations.

The project Industrial Resonances explores this terrain, creating reinterpretations of historical photographs through the transformation of selected elements, employing retouching tools and artificial intelligence. In doing so, it seeks to test the extent to which formal similarities inevitably trigger associations with shared references from the history of photography. The repetition of certain essential components, replicated again and again, underpins the idea of a visual production over time that is almost mimetic.

Similarly, the publishing field is marked by constant repetition: formats, designs and photobook typologies are reproduced year after year, often following the same professional models and structures. For this reason, Industrial Resonances is not a single book but a constellation of several distinct photobooks. Each responds to one of these recognisable formulas, like an editorial echo that embodies, in the very medium itself, the same logic of repetition and resonance that runs through the images.