Architectural Photography Extends Beyond Buildings
Last year I became obsessed with a different type of architecture: The network that comprises our global supply chain.
Buying random shit I don’t need online is traditionally how I procrastinate on work and cope with the occasional spiritual void in my life. So you can imagine my displeasure upon being denied such an outlet in 2021. So I developed a new obsession out of necessity. I wanted to learn how the stuff we buy gets from point A to B, so I could figure out why it was so easily taken from me. I consumed countless articles and watched endless hours of youtube documentaries that caught me up to relative speed.
I learned that ninety percent of global trade happens on the water with over 11 billion tons of goods moved in the world’s oceans. That translates to 4 trillion dollars annually. 450 Billion dollars of which go through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach which are the two busiest in the United States. The port of Long Beach alone employs over 50,000 humans. These are some sobering statistics that contextualize just how vital our supply chains are to the national and global economy.
The breadth of the congestion at the port was so severe that even with a wide lens of 24mm equivalence, it is impossible to capture all the ships in a single frame.
Waiting on a PS5… If you were one of the millions of consumers waiting months for a car, office furniture, or raw materials for a home improvement project, chances are it was stuck on one of these ships.
A Capitalist Armada
So much is at stake. So why is the global infrastructure that supports our supply lines as delicate as a house of cards? The tiniest of disruptions can derail our economy like an asteroid slamming into the Earth. And unfortunately, we can’t just nuke it out of the sky before it gets too close. Preserving it is significantly more complicated.
I am just a photographer: I won’t make an ass of myself by claiming any expertise on the nuts and bolts of what happened. Each reason deserves its own thorough investigation by people way smarter than me, who’ve already done the research. It's out there for those who are interested.
We can all surmise that Covid-19 shut down production all over the world resulting in massive shortages of everything from cars to PS5s. Even now, we don’t know if or when we’ll return to the stockpiles we had pre-pandemic. Add labor shortages, shipping container shortages, increased consumer demand from all of us sitting at home bored buying shit, and from companies re-opening and ordering in bulk plus the 2021 holiday season, and you can start to gain some clarity. Many manufacturers predicted a decline in consumer demand as we all went into lockdown and were blindsided by the opposite reaction as many of us were flush with savings, government stimulus, and newfound urges to remodel our homes. We purchased things in record numbers.
The pandemic was the match that lit this global bonfire, but the kerosene had been poured long before because of a production model pioneered by Toyota Motors post WW2 known as “just in time manufacturing” where companies stockpile as few parts and raw materials as possible. Instead, they buy what they need as they need it based on consumer demand. This is great and profitable when things are going smoothly as savings are substantial upfront; however, introduce delays and shortages into the market and suddenly raw materials for your products become much harder and more expensive to obtain, (especially when they’re all made or assembled in different countries), which in turn increases prices and wait times for your customers. The dangers of this manufacturing model had been warned about for decades, and the pandemic seems to have validated those concerns.
Products might be delivered and consumed in America, but they’re probably assembled in China. The parts might be manufactured in Germany, and the raw materials sourced from Africa. With so many moving parts and everyone going through the same disruptions at once, It’s a wonder we were able to buy anything period.
Photographing The Crisis.
Being a recent transplant to Long Beach was kismet. I was now at the center of the crisis in America and could physically see the congestion of ships. Views from Signal Hill provided a hell of a sobering perspective that revealed just how clogged the pipes of commerce were. I may not be an economist, but I do have my own way of shining some perspective on the situation.
I lugged my Canon R5 and Fuji GFX100s into a helicopter barely bigger than one of my drones and took off into a golden, hazy afternoon as hundreds of ships as far as the eye could see sat anchored in a purgatory: waiting for permission to enter one of the ports. I should probably mention that it was my first time in a helicopter and the initial take-off almost had me shitting my pants since I requested the doors be removed. Let’s just say you could feel every movement with more intensity. It was unpleasant. But I am also terrified of rollercoasters, so that should give you an idea of how little tolerance I have for such things. Thankfully I am the type who gets so hyper-focused on a single task at hand and once I was shooting, I didn’t have the capacity to worry about something else. I would have otherwise had a panic attack upon realizing just how high I was off the ground riding on nothing more than what felt like the back of a dragonfly.
The lenses were pretty straightforward: Unlike my architectural photography work that rewards patience and precision, for this shoot, I had to be quick and nimble, so no tilt-shifts. Chopper rules dictate that everything on you has to be connected to you on a “doors off” flight, so I was not going to be allowed to switch focal lengths once we were up in the air. I opted for the 32-64mm on my Fuji to cover wide shots, and the 70-200mm RF Lens on the Canon for my telephoto needs.
My purpose with these images was to provide a sense of scale for the average viewer to instantly comprehend the impact suffered by our consumer-driven economy. To show its girth and its vulnerability. And how easy it can come crashing to a halt.
So Close. Yet So Far. Using the 70-200RF lens on the Canon 5R allowed me to get this unique perspective that compresses the background and gives proximity to the backlog. The Los Angeles Skyline sits just ten miles away and housing over over ten million residents waiting for their stuff.
Stacking containers revolutionized global trade in the 1950s. Back then the average pay load on a ship would be about 58 containers. Today, the largest container ships can hold up to 23,000.
Long Beach was a ghost down during covid, but it’s port was busier than ever. A milestone for what’s already the second busiest port in the United States.
Congestion stretched beyond the sea. A shortage of truck drivers and workers at the port contributed to a backlog of containers waiting desperately to be unloaded.
A single civilian boat lends to add a sense of scale for comparisons sake. Here you can see just how massive these ships are. This is a technique i often use in my architectural photography work where I use human elements to show the relative size of buildings and interior spaces.
Over a hundred ships wait off the coast of Long Beach, California. And we’re not even counting what’s backlogged over at America’s busiest and largest port in Los Angeles just north of here.
Retailers really felt the squeeze. Imagine being a T-shirt company with thens of thousands of shirts sitting in one of these containers for weeks. How would you manage to sell anything? How would you manage consumer expectations?
A surge in global demand for face-masks made in china resulted in the supply of shipping containers being spread thin as suddenly the entire world was doing business with china. Empty containers sitting in ports throughout the world caused a shortage of them were they were needed most in China, which struggled to ship goods even though their factories were producing in record numbers by late 2021. This created the added consequence of blowing up the cost of shipping containers which increased ten-fold, hence the cost of shipping in general ballooned and was passed down to consumers. Inflation is a hell of a thing.
The Port of Long Beach buried in containers. The pandemic accelerated an inevitable trend that had already been building massive momentum: Online shopping. Amazon recorded record profits in 2021 with an estimated increase of 57% in sales from the previous year. Consumers are demanding stuff be delivered to their front doors in record numbers and are placing further stress on the supply chain by demanding on return policies that are just as fast and flexible.
A Lonely vessel sits anchored with the rolling hills in the distance at sunset. The very human crews on these ships aren’t mentioned enough. What must it have been like for them to be so close to land for weeks at a time with no updates on when they’d get to walk on solid ground again? What must that do to one’s mental health?
The Long Beach International Gateway flanked by the rolling hill in the background. It provides port access for the tallest of container ships and is the first long-span cable bridge in California.