NYU’s Kimmel Galleries recently held an exhibit featuring photographer and environmentalist Stephen Mallon. With a thematic focus on construction sites, mechanization and scrapyards, Mallon’s work is recognizable for its clarity, precision and composition.

“We decided to take the exhibition in a slightly different direction,” Mallon said. “In the past it’s been a little more narrative, following an entire story with different projects. In this one, we pulled some images that highlight different areas of different projects that were all connected by a constant link, like tetra-maps, that I was always searching up.”

Mallon’s iconography hinges on industrialization, a theme that holds great significance to him as an artist.

“I am concerned about the environmental aspect of consumption and I am still fascinated by the machine, how things and devices work,” Mallon said. “The scrap yards have been a visual playground for me to kind of find things and moments to photograph.”

The exhibition is an assortment of 19 selected pieces. Inspired by artists Chris Jordan, Edward Burtynsky and journalist Carlos Salgado, Mallon emphasized that the emotionality and scale of his work distinguish his aesthetic from that of a photojournalist.

“I am coming from a vantage point of an artist, not a journalist,” Mallon said. “The separation [of the two] is really my perspective; I’m not trying to present myself as a journalist just covering a story. These are art documentary projects for me. I have a strong eye for design and balance within my images, there is almost a sculptural element when I am photographing…how the frame and subject matter relate to each other.”

Tisch freshman Ross Godick spoke to the appeal of the surprisingly large physical scale of Mallon’s work.

“[Mallon’s] pictures are interesting because they act like still-lifes but on the scale of a landscape,” Godick said. “Where most still-lifes are set up in a studio or some interior these are on an industrial scale.”

Pamela Tinnen, curator of Kimmel Galleries, was drawn to the hybrid nature of Mallon’s work — its ability to blend and present a powerful narrative message alongside a distinctive aesthetic style.

“As a curator, I’m always interested in how narratives are constructed and how information is transmitted, so this project is very in line with my academic and artistic interests,” Tinnen said. “It’s not often you find a photographer who is able to document a topic, visually speak to that topic in a way that tells a story and does it justice, and still have a work that can move you on a solely aesthetic level too.”

Following NYU’s exhibition, Mallon hopes to return to the scrap yard for further projects.

“I am hoping to get on a ship to follow some scrap metal from the United States to a foundry overseas,” Mallon said. “We are just waiting for the right time.”

As advice to aspiring photographers at NYU and elsewhere, Mallon encourages a preservation of individuality.

“What stories people have and how they bring them to what they are capturing and executing defines them as artists,” Mallon said. “Respond a lot to your environment, because everyone will have a unique sensibility and access to something that someone else won’t. Think about how to portray that in a unique and specific way.”

Email Zoe Thompson at [email protected].