"On a summer afternoon in 2017, Los Angeles-based artist Ian James found himself at the Pain Reliever Bar & Grill, the only functioning establishment in Nekoma, North Dakota. Lingering until midnight, while trying not to look too much like a Californian in a town of less than 30 residents, James struck up a conversation with a local couple who explained how to gain access to the Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex."
"The former anti-ballistic missile military facility, constructed during the cold war and only operational for six months before being decommissioned, was his destination: specifically, its brutalist concrete radar tower resembling an Egyptian pyramid without an apex. For the next two days, while James car-camped in a field to photograph the radar tower in different lighting conditions with his 4x5 camera, he became transfixed by the pyramid's uncanny nature as a purpose built ruin unmoored from time."
Ian James traveled to the Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex in Nekoma, North Dakota, to photograph its brutalist concrete radar tower that resembled an Egyptian pyramid without an apex. He camped and used a 4x5 camera to capture the tower in varying light, finding the structure uncanny and like a purpose-built ruin unmoored from time. Those photographs became part of a broader project documenting over 75 pyramid-shaped buildings across nearly 20 states and Canada, including office complexes, churches, museums, Walmarts, and private residences. The project originated from a new-age music radio show and a collection of pyramid-motif cassettes, leading James to link pyramid buildings with new-age aesthetics and what he terms capitalist metaphysics.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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