Peter Steinhauer: Cocoons

Peter Steinhauer: Cocoons

Home to more skyscrapers than any other city, and with one of the world’s highest population densities, Hong Kong embraces vertical living like no other place on earth. Buildings are wrapped in colorful nylon mesh to protect the streets below from the dust and debris generated by the lofty construction sites of this ever-ascending city. While this construction technique serves as a practical safety measure, it also produces an aesthetically appealing result: under a cloak of scrim, buildings that will soon fit neatly into their ubiquitous surroundings transform into shockingly visible, candy-colored monoliths.

In his series Cocoons, photographer Peter Steinhauer catalogs these monochromatic sites of transformation with a discerning eye and a digital technical camera. For over a decade, Steinhauer has scoured the city for newly wrapped structures and angles from which to photograph them. Choosing to work only on cloudy days, the artist uses the soft light of an overcast sky to intensify the various hues of the colorful structures. In his carefully framed and meticulously rendered photographs, Steinhauer reflects upon the metamorphosis of urban space with images that reveal the texturally rich and radiant effect of an otherwise utilitarian construction technique.

Originally from Boulder, Colorado, San Francisco-based photographer Peter Steinhauer lived and worked in Asia for over twenty years before returning to the United States in 2014. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally and has been featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, WIRED, and Time. Steinhauer’s second monograph, Enduring Spirit of Vietnam, was awarded Best Photography Book of the Year by PDN (Photo District News) and received a silver medal in the Independent Publishers Annual Book Awards in 2007. In 2009, Steinhauer received the PDN Annual Photographic Award of Excellence, and in 2014 he was a finalist for the Lucie Foundation’s Photographer of the Year Award. His work is held in the permanent collections of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art and the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, among others.

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