📷 The Towers — Northern India · 04 Jun 2026
A photograph and a story, every morning
The Towers
Northern India · landscape
A line of high-tension pylons recedes into haze across a hazy plain — the spine of the grid, photographed where it crosses farmland.
High-tension power lines are usually photographed as ugly intrusions on a landscape. But up close they're remarkable structures — engineered to hold tonnes of tension across kilometres of open country, every tower a piece of steel calligraphy. Stand at the foot of one and look up and they stop being ugly. They become impressive.
This line crossed a plain just outside a small town, the towers stepping away into the haze in even intervals. The conductors looped between them in those long, deliberate curves that high-voltage cables make. The sky was the colour of dust. I shot in black and white because the colour version was just various shades of brown and grey anyway. There's a school of photography that thinks the only worthwhile landscape is the one without human work in it. I think the work is part of the landscape now, and it's worth looking at.