Barnaby Nutt is on a roll… first there was ‘No Constructive Conclusions’ with Wojtek and Pavel, then ‘Nighttime Adventures in Neopan’ with Smith, and just barely 2 months into 2018, here he is with ‘Fabryka,’ a solo zine of industrial estates in various stages of abandonment, the decaying factory towns that support(ed) them, and the used-up looking land that surrounds both.
Taken in Poland, the Check Republic, Hungary, and England on both film and digitial, the photos could’ve been taken in many parts of North Texas, all over the US and Canada too. It’s a fairly universal theme, to be sure, and Nutt captures the desolation and decay, the fading away and reclamation by the natural environment well.
In a brief statement at the end of the zine, he talks about memory, how his works, or doesn’t. In general, he forgets things. Photography helps him remember that photograph or scene, and maybe some of what was going on at the time he made the picture, but not much more than that. The zine speaks to this, with the once busy factories and bustling factory towns decaying, falling into ruin, and slowly succumbing to time and nature.
‘Fabryka’ is more book-like (read: perfect-bound, with a stiff cover) than Nutt’s previous, split zines, but like those, it’s equally well conceived and printed. If I have one complaint, it’s with the layout: images appear to be centered on pages without accounting for the half-inch that the perfect binding hides, so it makes all the images look like they’re sliding into the gutter. In any case, I’m excited to see what he comes out with next.
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Overall, I’d give it 3.8 stars
Nutt may have some copies left. If you’re interested, reach out to him on Twitter. That seems to be best. At £8, with a print and shipping to the US included (or £6 in the UK), it’s well worth it.
