No, I can’t stay away long from the massive Soli steelyard in Tbilisi’s industrial Eliava district. I found it a few years ago when seeking exactly this kind of place. Lots of new steel, but no roof, so it is exposed to the elements, especially rain and snow. I was looking for that contrast between the blue of the new metal and the corrosion colors, yellows through reds, that light rust will bring. Two atoms of Fe (iron), three of O (oxygen): iron oxide, technically. The rust will pop out and come forward from the receding cool-toned background. There are infinite abstract possibilities here. My lifelong fascination with science fiction, and a good dose of pareidolia (seeing forms in nature’s random places), combine here with perfect and always surprising results. I never know what I’ll get.
It also doesn’t hurt, too, that my wife shares a last name with the place’s director; so we’re related! (He calls me son-in-law, “sidze”.) Or that I’ve given him a couple of my rust prints for the walls there, with more coming. He gives me free rein to spend hours clambering over everything to find what is waiting for me. Last time, yesterday as I write this, I took an American photographer friend, who had an equally enjoyable time.
The colors also range across the whole visible spectrum, though: you’ll never know what you’ll find. Nature’s processes work their mundane magic and leave me in awe. Purples, greens, blacks, whites all make appearances, sometimes iridescently, sometimes incandescently. I shoot almost entirely flat surfaces (wanting the whole plane to be in focus), and my choices can be a few inches, or a few meters, in size. Then I edit minimally in Photoshop. Straighten lines to be parallel with the frame edges; heighten color contrast. That’s mostly it. Title each piece if I can: I’m looking for what concrete forms or events these abstract images evoke, as whimsical as they might be.
I might eventually get around to using something other than my simple, cheap “kit” lens, the 18-55, which is very versatile. A can also shoot macro, 1:1, with a 90mm lens, if I want to get super-close and perhaps leave most of the frame blurred instead of sharp. That will give an entirely different look. One day.
My new images include “Mary Meets Elizabeth,” where two pregnant woman, cousins, from the New Testament compare their situations, one destined to bear Jesus Christ, the other John the Baptist. A fuzzy figure is “Yell”. There’s a rocket ascending in “Liftoff”. Some shots will need time for their names to emerge. Some will suggest various things to different people, and I might leave them untitled. I always invite the viewer to impose their own name anyway. A few will really stand out from every occasion.
This is me at play, freed by familiarity to use my eyes and camera without thinking of technical details. I allow no time limit (except the all-day working hours of the steelyard, closed on Sundays). I will wait some months at least between visits, to give time for both new steel to be exposed as one or more top layers are bought, and for more precipitation to wreak its slow changes. Weather, I do have to watch out for. I need at least a day or two rainless before going, so the steel will be dry. It doesn’t matter if shooting day is cloudy or sunny, though cloudy means I don’t have to avoid unwanted shadows. Such excursions aren’t for everyone, I get that. But for me they are pure joy. They kind of sum up different aspects of who I am as a person and an artist, everything coming together. I wish such delights for everyone, artist or not.
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
