Praiseworthy Destruction

We know that destruction per se isn’t something to be encouraged, but Canadian photographer Todd Mclellan features destruction and disassembly in a completely different light. His series of photos portray several relict objects, whose functionality has long gone, while their esthetics and the memories they evoke are not and will probably never be forgotten. However, he portrays them carefully disassembled.

For the series of photographs entitled “Disassembly”, McLellan disassembled each of the chosen objects (e.g. a transistor radio, a wall clock or typewriter), to their smallest segments and then proceeded to photograph them in a meticulously compiled formation. Dozens of miniature microprocessors, screws, springs and other various (mostly) house appliance segments, which at one time held everything together and ensured that the various appliances’ mechanisms worked, the author now transmutes into forms devoid of their very functions, thus jointly creating ‘disarmed’ portraits, for example, of the Pentax camera, yellow lawn mower or VCR.

Take a look at all the various details that household appliances are made from, the very ones you most likely owned, kept, maybe even used until recently.