Now this is clever. Made me smile. Assuming no foreknowledge and without Googling, any of you historians of photography care to take a guess as to what this is?
The title would give it away, so I'll post it later.
Mike
(Thanks to Roni)
UPDATE: Well, I thought as I went to bed last night that I'd give a few more people a chance to guess, even though Rob Atkins had already correctly guessed by that time (he was the first, although his comment beat a reader named Dan by a mere four seconds). As you've seen if you've checked the comments, that backfired on me a bit! At least it proves many readers are well informed about the photographers of the Düsseldorf School. Here's the page that Roni originally sent me the link to.
By the way, the title of the Idris Khan piece is "Every...Bernd And Hilla Becher Spherical Type Gasholders." It's a composite, à la Corinne Vionnet, of the individual images in the Becher piece below, or one similar to it (I'm not sure).
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Gas Tanks, 1983–1992
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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Mike Sebastian: "Is it the Hindenburg? Or some other dirigible? Or maybe a front view of a submarine?"
Featured Comment by Ron: "I'll take a wild guess and say it's the atomic bomb 'Fatman' at the Trinity test site."
Featured Comment by Lynn: "A gas ball? Used to have one like this nearby painted like a supersize golf ball until they sold the land and removed it."
Featured Comment by David in Sydney: "Is it a view of the world from the moon showing the steppes?"
Featured Comment by Steven House: "Back of someone's (famous) head looking out through some curtains."
Featured Comment by MJFerron: "Definitely a rocket propelled onion about to take off."
Featured Comment by aizan: "The world's biggest ball of twine/rubber bands/wire."
Featured Comment by Antony Shepherd: "Isn't that James Cagney at the top shouting 'Made it ma! Top of the world!' "
Featured Comment by richardplondon: " 'Look ma, I'm on top of the worrrld....' I forget the name of the film ['White Heat,' 1949 —Ed.]—James Cagney on top of a natural gas or oil storage tank, full of bulletholes (him, not the tank)."
Featured Comment by Tim Bradshaw: "A nuclear reactor?"
Featured Comment by Adrien: "A work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction...."
Featured Comment by Jim Freeman: "It's an x-ray of Mike's tooth, taken a moment before it blew."
Featured Comment by Roger Bradbury: "It's a water tower at the site where Kodak used to make Kodachrome. I can't wait, I'm going to have to Google it NOW!"
And the winning comment is....
Featured Comment by Kevin: "A Hilla and Bernd Becher print for collectors with limited wall space."
A spherical gas container? I have a few of those just a few hundred meters from my home here in Malmö, Sweden.
Posted by: Mathias | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 11:23 PM
Looks to me like one image made from many photographs made by Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Posted by: Rob Atkins | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 11:24 PM
Could be a layering of every Becher photo stacked on one another. Water towers were their thing you know :P
Posted by: Dan | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 11:24 PM
A layering of Bernd and Becher images is my assumption. Seems if it is there is a lot of this thing happening these days. Jason Salavon did it with Playboy centerfolds starting in the late 90's from memory. There are others as well. Interesting idea.
Posted by: David Boyce | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 11:25 PM
Yup, you guys got it. Rob beat you to the punch by just a few seconds, Dan.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 11:26 PM
This was exactly what came to mind when I saw the "all tourists..." pictures last week.
If I'm not mistaken the picture is actually made from one of the the Bechers' series.
Posted by: improbable | Tuesday, 01 March 2011 at 11:32 PM
Every...Bernd And Hilla Becher Spherical Type Gasholder
Posted by: Jeff Glass | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:00 AM
Spherical gas tank. The ladders up the sides give it away.
Posted by: antoine_k | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:06 AM
It's a composite of Bernd and Hilla Becher's water tower typologies!
Posted by: Christopher Rowe | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:14 AM
My guess would be a riff of some sort on the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Reminds me of Corinne Vionnet's work (or perhaps vice versa).
Posted by: Douglas Urner | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:21 AM
Gotta be Bern and Hilla's pics stacked.
Posted by: charlie | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:31 AM
Is it the Hindenburg? Or some other dirigible? Or maybe a front view of a submarine?
Posted by: Mike Sebastian | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:43 AM
I'll take a wild guess and say it's the atomic bomb "Fatman" at the Trinity test site.
Posted by: Ron | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 12:52 AM
Every Becher picture all mashed together?
Posted by: Chris Norris | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:07 AM
Becher's babies..
I knew it the second I saw it..
Posted by: David | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:29 AM
is it that german couple who photographed types of architecture?
Posted by: David Adam Edelstein | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:30 AM
All the Becher water tower pictures?
Posted by: Paul McEvoy | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:34 AM
With that stuff overhead, I'd guess it's some kind of a fuel or gas tank in a refinery.
JC
Posted by: John Camp | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:39 AM
Google is your friend here. I wonder if you included all gas-holders, not just the spherical ones, would the sphere still dominate? And I suspect that there is a similar Ur-shape to be found in the water towers as well.
Incidentally, there is serious work done in vision science to find the underlying common elements in faces. All frontal face shots can be decomposed into "eigenfaces" which, mixed in different amounts and distorted a bit, can give rise to any actual face. This is one path to rapid automatic recognition of people in crowds to facilitate our future all-surveillance society. It is not hard to show (but it takes a little math formalism) that superimposing lots of faces allows the most common eigenfaces to emerge.
scott
Posted by: scott kirkpatrick | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:45 AM
My guess would be some sort of pressurized gas storage tank at a refinery, you can see what look like pipes above and stairs that circle to the top.
Posted by: Chris T. | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:45 AM
Every Becher gas tank?
Posted by: J Ho | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:49 AM
A natural gas holding tank.
Posted by: Jim | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:51 AM
A gas holder/container ? See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder?wasRedirected=true
Posted by: Tom Knoflook | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:53 AM
Looks like a gas holding sphere. But my wife is a chemical engineer so I see these when I go to her office.
Posted by: Christopher Holland | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 01:59 AM
A composite of every photo taken by the Bechers?
Posted by: Guy Batey | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:05 AM
Is it a collage...no, that can't be the right word, er...a superimposition of the Bechers' photos of water tanks or something like that?
Posted by: Michael | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:06 AM
The Bechers' photos of water tanks overlayed...?
Posted by: Jim | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:07 AM
The "historian" part made me pause a bit. I'm starting to feel old. It's some of the Becher's work made using the same technique as your earlier posts of the portraits and Best Buys. Didn't you have a post on the reissue of the "New Topographics" catalog a while back?
Posted by: Darin Boville | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:10 AM
A gas ball? Used to have one like this nearby painted like a supersize golf ball until they sold the land and removed it.
Posted by: Lynn | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:12 AM
I guess every becher water tower DOES look the alike?
Posted by: Sumner Wells Hatch | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:12 AM
Gas Tanks - Bernd and Hilla Becher, enhanced a la recent mode by multiple superimpositions by Mr Kahn?
Not Googled, but I did have to check a book to remind me of their names; I certainly knew of their multiple, but single, images of industrial archetypes.
What's the prize, apart from TOP fame?
Regards - Ross
Posted by: Ross Chambers | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:16 AM
well, if i have to say it without google,
i will not remember their names,
but looks like superimposing the works of those two photographers (i think they're a couple as well in life) who have works of many industrial architecture typologies series, mainly tanks and warehouses and things like that,
saw some of their works few weeks ago at Tate modern.
Posted by: maurizio mucciola | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:24 AM
Love these different series by Kahn - but as I have foreknowledge, I'll keep quiet...
Posted by: Timothy E J Atherton | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:27 AM
An overlay of all the photos in the Bechers' watertower typology, I'll wager....
Posted by: David Noble | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:28 AM
A water tower
Posted by: Harv | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:32 AM
I thought it was something. Then I Googled and lo, I was right. I win. :)
Posted by: erlik | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:34 AM
Looks to me like a composite of multiple Bernd and Hilla Becher photographs of gas tanks.
Posted by: Paul Joseph | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:35 AM
a tank at an oil refinery? the background pipes remind me the one in Martinez CA, which I used to drive by on a regular basis
Posted by: Alex S | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:37 AM
Is it one of the water towers of Bernd and Hilla Becher?
Posted by: Anders Skjeggestad | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:38 AM
Well, I couldn't recall their names but I did guess right - and a search with tineye brings it up at the Saatchi gallery: it's a compilation of Becher typologies, done in a similar way to those holiday locations you posted about a few days ago. I'm sure it qualifies as art by today's standards, but not half as much fun as the holiday ones. To be honest, I think it's a pretty good way to see the Becher stuff - ie all in one go.
Posted by: Don | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:44 AM
It looks like an industrial gas tank, very much like those I know from my youth in the industrial city of Essen, Germany.
Posted by: Carsten Bockermann | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:50 AM
The photo looks to be of a gasometre, exposed several times.
TOP is a splendid site I visit daily. Keep up the good work.
Greetings, Leslie Quagraine.
Posted by: Leslie Qaugraine | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:56 AM
its the Beckers water towers (all of them) superimposed?
Posted by: jeremy epstein | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:03 AM
A tank at a gasworks.
Posted by: m3photo | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:08 AM
I think this work is similar to the work of Corinne Vionnet and his overlapping tourist snapshots (... "Most Tourists Take Pictures from the Same Spot').
Obviously, there are all the Becher's "spherical gasholders", overlapping of course.
Posted by: Diego | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:09 AM
Looks like a big gas tank to me (don't know the specific word in English though)
Posted by: Arnaud | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:18 AM
Being a country boy and having the odd visit to cities occasionally I've noticed various forms of these structures over the years.
Hazarding a guess I'd say it was a natural gas tank, but I could be wrong!
Posted by: Mark Mortimer | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:36 AM
It seems to be a metal sphere with ladders running up both sides. A vessel for holding a liquid or gas. We had something similar in my hometown which was painted bright blue and was used for holding gas.
Posted by: Nick | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:43 AM
Heh. Looks to me like a composite of one of the Bechers' industrial studies. Clever indeed!
Posted by: robert e | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:50 AM
Looks to me like someone superimposed one of the typologies by the Bechers.
Posted by: Marc Lankhorst | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:51 AM
Is it a 'Most water tower photographers stand in the same place' piece collated from the Becher archive ?
Posted by: marcus newey | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:54 AM
It's some sort of industrial tank. I have seen those in chemical factories.
Posted by: Abdee | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:01 AM
Should be a gasometer.
Best
Holger
Posted by: Holger Fehsenfeld | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:03 AM
High pressure spherical tank at a chemical or research installation? We have something that looks very similar on the grounds here.
Posted by: marek | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:14 AM
Oiltank?
Posted by: Branimir | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:15 AM
It is a nice pile of Becher foto's of gas tanks stacked together.....to catch the essense of a gasholder in one instead of 16 pictures.
Greetings, Ed
Posted by: Ed | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:19 AM
The arithmetic mean of all works of the Bechers?
:)
Posted by: Edi Weitz | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:51 AM
It's a water tower at the site where Kodak used to make Kodachrome. I can't wait, I'm going to have to Google it NOW!
Posted by: Roger Bradbury | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:54 AM
I looked up Idris Kahn after I posted my previous message and it seems I was right. I swear I didn't know him before and the Bechers really were the first thing that came to mind when I looked at the photo.
Maybe because of the "Most Tourists Take Pictures From The Same Spot" posting you had last month.
Posted by: Edi Weitz | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 04:55 AM
It's stacked Bechers, of course.
Posted by: Jesse Colin Jackson | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:05 AM
A composite of Bernd and Hilla Becher's typographies?
Posted by: Michael Jensen | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:06 AM
Isn't that James Cagney at the top shouting "Made it ma! Top of the world!"
Posted by: Antony Shepherd | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:08 AM
"Gas Tank" by Bernd and Hilla Becher (founders of the Dusseldorf School) perhaps?
see....http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/01/theory-interview-with-bernd-and-hilla.html
Posted by: David Grieveson | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:24 AM
Isn´t this one of the classic images of Bernd & Hilla Becher, but after an over enthusiastic spin-drying session?
;-)
Posted by: Per Ofverbeck | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:26 AM
A riff on the Bechers?
Posted by: Daniel | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:35 AM
Could it be a Bechers series superimposed?
Posted by: sneye | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:36 AM
Obviously, it's a bunch of (all?) Hilda and Bernd Becher's round tank photos rolled up into one image.
Posted by: Jim Simmons | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:48 AM
My first thought was a tank for holding natural gas. But after reading Mike's challenge I've decided it's the bow (nose?) of a submarine. A big submarine.
Posted by: Speed | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:54 AM
I'd guess it's a composite of all images in one class of the Bernd & Hilla Becher topologies...probably gas tanks.
http://c4gallery.com/artist/database/bernd-hilla-becher/bernd-hilla-becher-gas-tanks_1983-92.jpg
Posted by: Robin Harrison | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:12 AM
I'd say it's an LNG (liquified natural gas) tank, through a camera on LSD
Posted by: Pin | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:16 AM
Gas/Gasoline tank.
Posted by: Markus | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:25 AM
you threw me off with the alt-text of 'Kahn' which brought up images of a young william shatner.
it looks like an oil storage tank, or something along those lines.
Posted by: almostinfamous | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:30 AM
I have no idea what it could be. But this is rare. He definitely created his own unique style . I like.
Posted by: Jacek Sztandera | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:31 AM
one of Bernt and Hilla Becher water reservoir?
Posted by: Luigi Caponetto | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:33 AM
It's clearly a composite of many images, but what they depict I don't know. It seems like there's stairs going up on the sides, so the structure(s) are rather large. Containers for fluid or gas. Could be at an oil refinery.
Posted by: Mark Probst | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:34 AM
Gas storage tank?
Posted by: Paul | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:53 AM
A time-lapse photo of the construction of an oil refinery storage tank?
Posted by: Jeff Hohner | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:55 AM
Looks like one of those big spherical oil tanks to me. I can't imagine what it has to do with history of photography though.
Posted by: david | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:56 AM
Looks like a bunch of Bernd/Hilla Becher photographs of old industrial structures superimposed on each other.
Posted by: Geoff Wittig | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:57 AM
Looks more like a blooper from Bernd & Hilla Becher.
Posted by: Willem | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 06:57 AM
I'd say it's a group of spherical gas holders (which some people call gasometers, though I don't think that is the right term) photographed by, or in the style of, Bernd and Hilla Becher, stacked and averaged in Photoshop. I like it.
Posted by: Peter Marquis-Kyle | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:03 AM
A composite of the photos of water tanks made by that German couple whose name I cannot remember.
Posted by: Chris Hensel | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:04 AM
Liquidfied natural gas tank?
Posted by: john robison | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:09 AM
Every one of the Becher water towers?
Posted by: Laura Domela | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:13 AM
It is an oil tank, or maybe some other chemical, but most likely oil.
Posted by: scotth | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:19 AM
Looks like a water tower. Something the Bechers would have done.
Posted by: Mike | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:25 AM
It's a gas tower. Bernd and Hilla Becher, anyone?
Posted by: mário venda nova | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:35 AM
I'll say it's a gas storage tank, photographed from all directions with the exposures superimposed. Kind of like a 360-degree panorama, but pointing inward. It's something I've thought about doing.
Posted by: mph | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:35 AM
Gas storage I presume.
Posted by: Iwert | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:37 AM
Propane tank?
Posted by: John St. Onge | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:38 AM
Can I get a half-point for guessing what it was without knowing its significance? (I googled afterwards to get the rest of the story.)
Posted by: ault | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:40 AM
This is a composite from the Bernd and Hilla Becher series on water towers. Fantastic!
Idris Kahn also did a composite of all the pages of the Koran in one image; this one works better for me though.
david
Posted by: david drake | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:52 AM
Great stuff, anyway, though to quote William Matthews speaking for Charles Mingus, " 'There's a lot of that going around,' he said / and Sweet Baby Jesus he was right."
(For those who may care, the poem is Mingus at the Showplace from the impeccable Time and Money).
Posted by: yemado | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 08:22 AM
My tummy after cabbage rolls
Posted by: Mike Plews | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 08:59 AM
i'm thinking its a whole bunch of 'tourist photos' laid over top of one another, recently made
Posted by: Peter Aaslestad | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 09:18 AM
These projects are certainly interesting but fascination does not alter the fact that these works have been produced by breaching the Copyright of the original photographers - whether anonymous and unknown as is possibly the case with the tourism examples or celebrated and known like the Bechers.
Any of us that use a camera as a means of turning a buck rely on Copyright for our ability to put food on the table and so we need to respect it and keep mindful of its importance.
Cheers,
Walter
Posted by: Walter Glover | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 02:36 PM
"these works have been produced by breaching the Copyright of the original photographers"
Walter,
That's just not so. You're allowed to make new works out of copyrighted older works. If anything, the courts have upheld this principle to too great a degree--as in the case of Richard Prince.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 03:54 PM
I hereby appropriate all the comments above into a single work and title it "A typology of comments pertaining to a photo typology of all the Bechers typology photos of gas tanks"
Posted by: Hugh Crawford | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 05:51 PM
haha i'm glad the studio art degree i'm pursuing came in handy for something!
Posted by: Dan K | Wednesday, 02 March 2011 at 07:06 PM
There's something strange about the composite. In the 25 originals shown as the source for this, all those which have a gantry girder walkway have been photographed so that the gantry comes from the right. There are no images with the gantry on the left. Yet in the composite, the girders above the tank-blur extend completely across the picture. So it appears that each picture was mirrored as well as superimposed in its original form.
In the image processing literature, you apply a scale change to make the eyes and mouth line up in each image before superimposing them to see which details emerge as "eigen-features" characterizing a face. If the artist had done this, he would have had the sphere's edge sharply outlined, and still the spiral walkways and surrounding structures would make a nice blur with some characteristic details emerging.
scott
Posted by: scott kirkpatrick | Thursday, 03 March 2011 at 04:36 AM