Tom Jeffreys is enchanted by Toby Smith's documentation of alternative energy sources in the Scottish highlands.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again: etymologically, the photograph is written with light. And in the works of Toby Smith – currently on display at Printspace on Kingsland Road – it's an incredible richness of light that does so much to intrigue and fascinate.
For The Renewables Project, Smith has travelled round Scotland and been given unique access to the country's sources of alternative power. The resulting images are diverse and beautiful, showcasing the grand, cold majesty of nature, but also humanity's innovation and the advances of science. 
Interestingly, for a project that is very much about mankind's ability to operate within and against various – largely fairly inhospitable – environments, this exhibition is largely bereft of people. The only living figures given any prominence are dwarfed inside a massive dark undergound cavern. Amid damp and towering walls, boulders and broken shingle, the two beigely overalled figures sit, deep in dull conversation, lit harshly and narrowly by a single slice of neon.
This sense of man dwarfed by his own technology is reinforced by one of my favourite images in the show. A huge circular structure is viewed from above – dazzlingly lit in cobalt blue, violet and jade. Far, far below is a solitary workman. Clad brightly in yellow, he's less an independent subject than one small part of the machinery, one little addition to the composition.
In a similar movement, even this magical, strange technology – with its dials and lights and sense of sci-fi weirdness – is itself largely dwarfed by nature's unyielding strength. One memorable image depicts a huge damn – darkly big and brutish, it stretches itself across the landscape. And yet even this is overshadowed by snow-clad mountains, looming barely discernible in the background, and a mass of rich dark pines in the foreground. 
This is not to say, however, that Smith's work is a simple exercise in demonstrating nature's vast eternal power over man, or anything of that kind. What Smith does so well is remain impartial. Yes, there's politics in his choice of places to visit, but the actual images are so engaging precisely because they withhold judgement, something reinforced by the lack of much explanatory spiel. Both science and nature are capable, in Smith's hands, of genuine beauty. A big, bright, cold Scottish landscapes is zingy and fresh with snow. Huge industrial pipes run grandly through green countryside. The insides of a hydroelectric generator are clear, stark and magnificent. 
Above all though is a sense of mystique and of reverence. There's a little of Ryan McGinley's Moonmilk series in the eerily lit undergound caverns and tunnels, but there's also something of Edward Burtynsky in the combination of non-judgemental environmental awareness and powerfully seductive aesthetic. In these works, appropriately enough, science and nature are not in opposition, but in a magical, swirling, lightning dance, over, within and around each-other. It's beautiful to behold.
Toby Smith - The Renewables Project is at Printspace until 1st September 2010.
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Photo credits: Toby Smith www.shootunit.com
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