Shimmering stars, strewn garbage, giant shells, off-world intergalactic bases… look long enough at photographer Tom Hegen’s images of solar power plants and the imagination can turn the swathes of reflective panels that cover the landscape into something else entirely. Beyond the advantages of the clean energy that they produce, these manmade installations take on a sculptural, artistic quality that appears something beyond mere fields of solar energy in the making.
Hegen shot his Solar Power series in locations across the United States, France, and Spain, capturing the constructed fields of solar collection to pose the question of what it looks like for us, as a planet, to move towards sustainable energy. In these images, the innovative technology alters the landscape into a futuristic vision whose orderly, linear arrangement contrasts with the clean energy produced in the process. See more work by Tom Hegen here and on Instagram.
Images © Tom Hegen