The Red Rag

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: At the very back on the right is what the machinists at the factory called, “a vertical extrusion press.” Raber puts its date at 1917. Nobody remembers it ever running. Beside it is a deep pit into which, I'm told, it extruded tube. Behind it is a deep pool of PCBs.

The motor next to it is similar to the three that lined the north wall of the shop and were dated 1897.  I don’t believe the motor was connected to anything.

Only later did I think about the large wheel housing on the end of the pump and what it might contain and how it might link to the axis of the motor, deep in shadow, behind the railing.

Should anyone accuse me of staging the red rag, I promise that it is genuine rag and brilliantly red and had rested right there for, I believe, two years when I took this picture. It was there whenever the pump was running, and it stayed there nearly to the day the pump was scrapped.