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Martin Krieger, Professor in the School of Policy, Planning and Development, exhibits photographs of DWP Distribution Stations.
Initially, electricity was generated not far from where it was used to power industry and to light businesses and homes. In time, economies of scale, improvements in the capacity to transmit electrical energy over long distances at high voltages, and so the possibility of generating electricity close to energy sources (coal, hydropower), led to the separation of generation and consumption. That high voltage electricity needed to be received from elsewhere, converted to lower voltages, and distributed locally to users. Within two or three decades of the introduction of electrical lighting in cities, there was a network of electrical receiving and distribution stations throughout the city.
A complex and sophisticated and mostly-hidden technology allows us to treat electricity as a utility. But that technology also produced signs of its presence: in overhead wires and insulators, and in the buildings that contained the transformers that converted electricity to lower voltages. What is remarkable is that in Los Angeles, at least, the distribution stations were temples and monuments within otherwise unremarkable commercial and residential areas. Some were below ground or made to fit inconspicuously into the neighborhood. But for the most part they towered over adjacent structures, in their size and their significant form.
When Krieger started to notice the Department of Water and Power’s electrical distribution stations, after having encountered more than a few in his previous project documenting storefront churches, he discovered that they were not much noted or noticed other than as ordinary unremarkable parts of the landscape. Eventually, he resolved to see them all. There are an estimated 135 stations. Krieger has photographed about fifty so far. Their dispersed locations provide an effective way of seeing more of Los Angeles more systematically. They are often the only monuments in their neighborhoods.
This exhibition is comprised of many of the photographs Krieger has taken of the distribution stations.
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