Artist Statement:
A Shrine to Oil
In 1985, I gained access to the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego for about a year and a half. Located south of the Coronado Bridge, the industrial bustle and night time glow of the place was irresistible. Two major projects underway at the time were the hospital ship Mercy, and the soon to be infamous Exxon Valdez. The images in this room tell of the construction of the latter.
Armed with a helmet, a couple of badges, and a golf cart I was able to photograph at will throughout the yard, though all my images were subject to review to ensure no sensitive information ended up in the wrong hands. Only a handful of negatives were ever redacted.
Though the shipyard was incredibly photogenic, it seemed miraculous to me that enormous functioning ships could emerge from the tangled grinding chaos of the place. I admired, and felt overwhelmed by, the sheer scale and mass of hulls, bulkheads and machinery under construction, and remember feeling rattled the day the accident free days score board dropped from 148 to 2.
Standing inside the (single-walled) hull of the Exxon Valdez I asked a passing engineer where the oil tanks would be put. He answered “You’re looking at it.” Repeating the question produced the same answer - the hull was the tank. When I asked about double hull construction, he shrugged.
While the images haven’t changed since I made them, the way I feel about them has. Three years after it was launched, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska, causing the then-largest oil spill in US waters, giving rise to the landmark Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and legislating the phase-out of all single-hulled tankers from US waters by 2015.
A convoluted series of lawsuits, appeals, repairs, sales, re-namings (Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, Sea River Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, Dong Fang Ocean, and finally Oriental Nicety), re-flaggings and misfortunes ensued, leading to the final demise of the vessel in 2012. In a wry obituary, Shanta Barley writing for Nature, wrote:
The Oriental Nicety (née Exxon Valdez), born in 1986 in San Diego, California, has died after a long struggle with bad publicity.
Philipp Scholz Rittermann, 2025
www.rittermann.com
BIO 2025:
Philipp Scholz Rittermann was born in 1955 in Lima, Perú, and moved to Germany in 1969. In the mid-seventies, he co-founded Galerie Novum and taught photography in Hannover, emigrating to the United States at the end of 1982.
His photographs are included in more than 100 public, private, and corporate collections, including MoMA, New York, SFMoMA, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. A mid-career survey of Rittermann’s work was held at the Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, and Emperor’s River was presented at MCASD.
For over four decades, Rittermann has and continues to document art for artists, collectors, and major institutions in Southern California and across the nation. He also teaches photography and serves on the boards of several arts organizations.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW GALLERY
A Shrine to Oil
In 1985, I gained access to the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego for about a year and a half. Located south of the Coronado Bridge, the industrial bustle and night time glow of the place was irresistible. Two major projects underway at the time were the hospital ship Mercy, and the soon to be infamous Exxon Valdez. The images in this room tell of the construction of the latter.
Armed with a helmet, a couple of badges, and a golf cart I was able to photograph at will throughout the yard, though all my images were subject to review to ensure no sensitive information ended up in the wrong hands. Only a handful of negatives were ever redacted.
Though the shipyard was incredibly photogenic, it seemed miraculous to me that enormous functioning ships could emerge from the tangled grinding chaos of the place. I admired, and felt overwhelmed by, the sheer scale and mass of hulls, bulkheads and machinery under construction, and remember feeling rattled the day the accident free days score board dropped from 148 to 2.
Standing inside the (single-walled) hull of the Exxon Valdez I asked a passing engineer where the oil tanks would be put. He answered “You’re looking at it.” Repeating the question produced the same answer - the hull was the tank. When I asked about double hull construction, he shrugged.
While the images haven’t changed since I made them, the way I feel about them has. Three years after it was launched, the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska, causing the then-largest oil spill in US waters, giving rise to the landmark Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and legislating the phase-out of all single-hulled tankers from US waters by 2015.
A convoluted series of lawsuits, appeals, repairs, sales, re-namings (Exxon Valdez, Exxon Mediterranean, Sea River Mediterranean, S/R Mediterranean, Mediterranean, Dong Fang Ocean, and finally Oriental Nicety), re-flaggings and misfortunes ensued, leading to the final demise of the vessel in 2012. In a wry obituary, Shanta Barley writing for Nature, wrote:
The Oriental Nicety (née Exxon Valdez), born in 1986 in San Diego, California, has died after a long struggle with bad publicity.
Philipp Scholz Rittermann, 2025
www.rittermann.com
BIO 2025:
Philipp Scholz Rittermann was born in 1955 in Lima, Perú, and moved to Germany in 1969. In the mid-seventies, he co-founded Galerie Novum and taught photography in Hannover, emigrating to the United States at the end of 1982.
His photographs are included in more than 100 public, private, and corporate collections, including MoMA, New York, SFMoMA, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. A mid-career survey of Rittermann’s work was held at the Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, and Emperor’s River was presented at MCASD.
For over four decades, Rittermann has and continues to document art for artists, collectors, and major institutions in Southern California and across the nation. He also teaches photography and serves on the boards of several arts organizations.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW GALLERY
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