The trippy circuit boards in Heiko Hellwig's Silicon Cities look like aerial views of futuristic urban clusters lit up at night. Electrical pathways weave like streets past skyscrapers formed from transistors and diodes, bathed in a candy-colored LED glow. "If you're flying a drone over New York or LA, you might get similar views," Hellwig says.
Hellwig built these cityscapes last year using the guts of old MacBooks, IBMs, and even PlayStations that he scavenged from eBay and friends' basements. In his studio in Stuttgart, Germany, he took apart the dull gray and black boxes, revealing the vibrant motherboards, processors, and microchips hiding inside. He photographed the most intricate parts on a table in his studio while teetering on a ladder above, a tall tripod holding his Nikon D850 in position. A pair of Profoto lights—sometimes covered in red or green filters—threw the circuitry into relief, simulating the sunlight and shadows of a real city. For each composition, Hellwig spent up to five hours stitching and layering anywhere from three to 10 circuit boards together in Photoshop. He also kicked up the colors here and there, creating the neon shades of yellow, orange, and purple you might find illuminating a lively night street.
For Hellwig, the colorful circuit boards represent the bright, utopian future that computer makers promise their tech will bring about. But they're also a bit menacing, satirizing a dystopian world where machines have taken over, and cities really are made up entirely of silicon chips.
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