Field Season One: May 2025
Field Report Notice
The Bureau of Operational Landscapes circulates field reports as temporary dispatches. Each season is published for a limited duration and then withdrawn. This archive consolidates those materials as part of an ongoing record of infrastructural sites and public encounters.
Field Season 1 took place in Trenčín, Slovakia from May 17—31, 2025 and comprises 14 field reports. The visit functioned as an initial survey of the disused industrial rail bridge and its surrounding terrain. The reports document first observations, site walks, and preliminary photographic work undertaken during that period.
May 22, 2025 (late at night)
Tonight I was walking along the other bridge admiring the view of ‘my’ bridge, plotting a good photographic angle, when a real bucket of a truck loped past, bouncing a few baskets of strawberries onto the road.
Cars trundled by, squashing those succulent berries into pulp. A slight ‘squish’ sound erupted, and with it, a beautiful fragrant smell wafted through my body, into my nostrils, deep into my soul, drifting onwards, mingling with the black waters of the Váh below.
Yes, peaches, not strawberries. Tomato potato. Photo: William Eggleston, Untitled, 1971.
I stopped, and took in a very deep breath. I didn’t want to let that luscious smell disappear.
A car honked. The smell dispersed. I left.