Diesel City

Diesel City Logo, by *stefanparis

Over the five plus years that the Steampunk Tribune has been in existence, two of the tenants I’ve endeavored to remain faithful to are: 1) Maintain a focus on the Steampunk genre, and 2) Minimize my review of books.  The first issue is fairly obvious, as it is the “rasion d’etre” for the blog is the genre – people who come to this corner want to read about Steampunk and associated goings on.

The second exists only because RL has been particularly demanding during the past few years, thus reducing the time I have to relax and read.  Though I’ve received numerous generous offers to review Steampunk books, it would be simply wrong to simply accept literature, then not do it justice with a proper review (and the Steampunk Scholar does an yeoman job of Steampunk literature review and I’d certainly not wish to vex one of Steampunk friendliest academics!)  I always said that it would take something extraordinary to bypass these two dictums – and I have found such a gem with Diesel City.

Diesel City is an endeavor by a Mr. Stefan, (also known as *stefanparis on DeviantArt, for those in the know), is an exceptionally talented multi-media artist who is based out of Paris but is known for his amazing works regarding the Dieselpunk genre.

I won’t belabor attempting to define “Dieselpunk”, as many who are familiar with Steampunk are certainly aware of this later off shoot of the genre.  (If you are not familiar with Dieselpunk (DP), I would suggest a visit to the online epicenter of Dieselpunk, located at: http://www.dieselpunks.org/).  Though DP has been around for a few years, it has slowly begun emerging and establishing itself apart from its better-known older cousin.

As Steampunk has its roots in the turn-of-the century, including its artistic influences from Art Nouveau, Dieselpunk takes its artistic inspiration from Art Deco, but with a bit of an update.  With said inspiration, as with the plethora of new genre art that exists for Steampunk (again, a quick visit to Steampunk on DeviantArt will exemplify this), Dieselpunk has perhaps fewer, but better known artistic specialists, one of which is Mr. Stefan.

His work, Diesel City, takes a first-person narrative of Dieselpunk, while displaying his amazing works, both via original stylized art and representation via photo-manipulation.   My first introduction to his work was via the Dieselpunk.org website, (see globe photo), and his Art Deco influenced work has a leaning towards advertising – promoting unique products, means of travel, and destinations!

His photo-manipulation work provides more of a feel for the Dieselpunk atmosphere – Diesel City focus less on an over-arching narrative, and more on translating the genre atmosphere via inspiring imagery and enveloping commentary.

As one of the seminal works of the Dieselpunk genre, I’m confident that anyone wishing to understand (and be inspired by) Dieselpunk will thoroughly enjoy this outstanding work!  But enough of my prattling – to learn more, please visit the Diesel City website, located at: http://www.dieselcity.fr/en/home.php