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PORTS AND SHIPS

Photos and text by Andrea Frank

Here are photographs of cargo vessels that are either anchored in ports or waiting in
position to enter their port of call. They are loaded with unknown goods, tightly integrated
into a logistical system of mind boggling complexity that answers to pressures of time and
related profit.
The ships name and place of home port, together with the shooting location, hint at an
invisible globe-spanning network of vessels that crisscross oceans. The vessels shape is
defined by function, their weathered steel bodies respond to the maritime light of the
respective locations in Europe, the U.S., and Southeast Asia. The images are virtually

devoid of humans, rendering the ships actors on a stage of massive scale, charged with
our often sentimental and archaic psychological projections and identifications. In an effort
to connect the individual and the global, I grapple with the concept of scale, trying to relate
the cargo shiploaded with thousands of those standardized containers and part of a fleet
of millionsto my own physical context and scale.
My underlying interest for this project lies in systemic relationships and dynamics in our
globalized world. The images must function as singular formal works while collectively
engendering associations and weaving connections that span the ecological, global
economic, and socio-political arenas.
Caught in the whirlwind of the rapid and often exponential growth and change of
technological revolution, there is a street perception and expectation in the western world of
constant and ever-improving availability of faster and cheaper personal technologies,
cheaper goodsin short, more stuff. The earth is perceived and treated as an
inexhaustible resource to be exploited with no care for the long-term effects of our actions.
Ports and Ships casts a light on our current state of global trade, exposing the invisible
backbone of a convenient but ultimately destructive and unjust social and economic
system. We have come to rely on outsourcing as a strategy to cut costsexploiting nonunionized and low-cost labor in developing countries; moving raw material, parts, and
goods across oceans several times before they are sold to the consumer; and ignoring the
detrimental effects on societies and the environment.
Everything seems to still be serene and calm in this world of seagoing vessels moving on a
vast surface with unimaginable depths below. The changes that are currently happening in
this body of watersuch as ice caps melting and water levels risingare still too
incremental to be noticed.
I have no idea how to remediate the grave threats to the planet and humanity. The links
and dynamics that connect contemporary global societies are too intricate, complex, and
new. At no time in human evolution has man had to deal with such dynamic systems on a
global scale. Technology is outracing our ability to assimilate it. We are in a collective
paralysis where we know we are part of a destructive system, yet are unable to seriously
reconsider our societal paradigms and ideologies.

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