Thunder

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  

Once We Believed

An arpeggio of corbeling

like a ripple of wind,

tiny flourish of masonic art,

imprint of the mason's hand

claiming immortality

on the back wall

of the idle

factory.

The Idling Furnace

Garrison Keillor: "Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  I arrived in the middle of last week's snow storm to catch pictures of the factory yards covered in snow and to see the snow flakes falling in front of old brick.  When I went in to check on casting I found the furnace idling. The furnace idles to avoid the need for priming it.

Can human capacities also be kept idling: social structures, institutions, expertise, values systems - to avoid the need for priming them? - if, in fact, such capacities can ever be primed again once they are lost.

Industrial Idling

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

Alchemy's Touch

Toothsome particulates hang in the air, 

the tongue knows first what  simmers there 

or if casting has begun, 

and on the nerve ends round the nose

asperities of sooty harvest, 

before eyes see the furnace glow.

The Old Mill No.5 (conclusion): Engineering

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  "A Day at the Mill, Concluded":  There were delicate calipers  and crow bars that were even heavier than they looked and a pair of glasses and an aging bottle of Alka Seltzer. I shot a number of pictures before I discovered a door at the far end of the room.  I opened the door and descended 4 or 5 steps to a passage that went on like a long, dark tunnel. Dim, dust-covered window lined one side of the tunnel and let in a bit of grey glow. It took some moments before I realized I was looking back down the same parts rabbit hole I had previously entered and photographed from the other end. 

I visited a few other places at the old mill that day, but when I returned to the trailer in the first shed, my friend let me know I had to leave. Perhaps he had no more stories to tell me. I tried several times to get back again, but it was clear the funhouse was closed for the foreseeable future and time to move along the track.

The Old Mill No.4: Office of the Chief Engineer

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  "A Day at the Mill, Pt.4":  As it turns out, the passage was a storage closet lined with shelves of  gears, wheels, cams; parts to a puzzle that no longer needed solving.  

I never reached the end of the passage. I turned back and followed other tracks, but later, having passed through a devious set of stairs and hallways, I entered a room that looked as if it had been the site of a brawl. It was clearly the engineers' office.  A large table on the back wall was laden with faded engineering plans and diagrams. A window by a desk was open and overlooked the arena, a place to watch the millworks working. 

The Old Mill No.3: Parts

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:   "A Day at the Mill, Pt.3":  After looking down on the arena from both sides of the arcade,  I noticed a narrow doorway at the edge of the arcade, and I investigated following a few steps down into a passage that went on like a long, dark tunnel. Dim, dust-covered windows lined one side of the tunnel and let in a bit of grey glow. 

I knew the windows must overlook the arena I had just looked down on.  I thought that with the help of my flashlight I might scare out a picture even if I couldn't quite see what I was photographing.  I descended into the darrkness, testing the floor with my toe.  I was three stories up, in a dark passage, and I knew nothing of the floor and wondered about rats. Slowly my eyes adjusted.

This image was exposed for 30 seconds at f/18, ISO 800 with a flashlight continually painting light over the scene. 

The Old Mill No.2: An Area Like an Arena

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  "A Day at the Mill, Pt.2":  I tried not to look too eager to get on with my shooting as I left my new friend and his clean-up task. Near where the trailer stood, the long basilica was bisected by something that felt like a transept, though it only extended in one direction. It had the lure of complexity, almost like entering into an intricate machine. 

I climbed up a half flight of metal stairs to a metal deck beneath a tangle of ducts, pipes, conduits, and wires snaking where they could to cross around the transept opening. One duct looked large enough for a person to walk upright inside. Stairs scaled the walls through the anatomy of infrastructure and architecture; catwalks disappeared into unknown interiors beyond walls, pipes, ducts and on to sundry destinations for reasons mostly forgotten. In it's last life this had been a mighty factory producing heavy machinery.

The transept extended like an arcade with windows lining both walls, and when I went to the windows I was shocked to find myself looking down two stories into an area like an arena piled with more factory equipment. The space was two bays wide and longer than I could see.  Thirty and forty ton cranes straddled both bays. Whatever once went on here was big.  Now it looked like a tag sale of decommissioned manufacturing might.

The Old Mill

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  "A Day at the Mill, Pt.1":

I used all my powers to persuade the man to let me photograph the old factory sheds.  I followed him into the building as I made my case until we stood halfway down a long basilica-like space where a trailer served as his office.  The sheds come together at odd angles and were encrusted with rusted barnacles of past operations and promised a funhouse of adventure. He explained, the new owner had hired him to clean up.

He was alone, one man in a space the size of several football fields and loaded with equipment, some rusting and dead and some that looked like it must be the rummaged booty of failed corporations now dissolved and bankrupt.  The ceiling was leaking and the floors were greasy. He warned, "Gotta watch out for falling glass." In all directions the room seemed to disappear into shadows. There were places where stairs disappeared below the floor into darkness that I would never dare to enter.  Was that part of his job?  I also saw other dark doorways at grade level and off of catwalks high in the rafters.  I hoped he had a big crew coming. He considered my request slowly while he told me about other places he had worked and things he had done. He didn't seem at all busy. "Sure," he said finally, "you can shoot."  

W.A.A. Award

I'm pleased to announce that in the recent juried show at the Washington Art Association, my photograph, "Made in America" won 2nd place and a cash prize. Information about the show can be found at: http://www.washingtonartassociation.org/exhibitions/membersshow/thewinners/

Downstream

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Upstream Music

Upstream, 

rivers 

begin

as 

raindrops. 

They fall, 

splash, 

gather in puddles, over

flow into rills 

and creeks, 

runnels and freshets,

minnows and frogs,

beetles and waterbugs,

scarabs and butterflies, 

they tumble down cataracts, 

cascade along brooks and bubbling 

streams that wind through woods and meadows before 

becoming rivers surging white in spring rains, racing, spilling over 

waterfalls, 

where they pause.

In deep pools where trout lurk

they carry on the fugal singing

ever downstream

or along the gulf stream

or upswept

in an airstream 

in fogs and clouds and drops of rain

born at thirty-two feet per second per second.

As they fall they gain momentum

surge and coarse through

the industries of our kind

and whirling gusts 

in the maelstrom of

whatever's next.

We are their children

and long to honor them

as we desecrate their shores.

Rimmon Falls on the Naugatuck

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  

Nawkatunk

The first settlers 

followed the tracks 

the native people used

that followed the river

they called, "Naugatuck."

It was the easy way 

through wilderness boscage 

where native people hunted and fished 

and where settlers soon built mills, 

developed expertise in brass and copper

and later rubber, 

and where imaginative people 

built what they imagined. 

When railroads shot up the valley 

like vines up a sycamore, 

opportunity drew laborers

sprouting families, churches and schools, 

social clubs and selectmen, 

societies and brotherhoods, 

sisterhoods and neighborhoods, 

unions and country clubs,

parties and alliances,

relationships that helped communities 

endure and thrive.

Huntington, Birmingham, 

Ansonia, Humphreysville,

Beacon Falls, Naugatuck, 

Mattatock, Thomaston, 

Wolcotteville, and Winsted became

the towns that made the world's copper and brass.

Along the river by Rimmon Falls

in the time before the settlers,

near where the brass mills used to be, 

its told, 

there was "this old tree," 

"Naw-ka-tunk,"

in the native tongue,

a sweet place in the shade

prized for good fishing.

Watch Your Step

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

Move to the Rear

Watch your step, 

Move to the rear. 

Hold on to the hand rails 

when stepping up or stepping down.

Please keep your bags out of the aisles. 

Don't crowd.

Let departing passangers pass.

Watch your step getting off. 

Move to the rear.

Good Ol' Jack

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Would you buy a used digger from a raked gasser like that?

For the New Year No.2: Sweetheart

Beth Slater Whitson:  "Let me call you 'sweetheart.'  I'm in love with you."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I guess this series is devoted to the many ways our cars become us.

Remembered in Goshen

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  It was probably sometime in 2010, wandering in Goshen, when I discovered this farm. It was no longer in operation, and I spoke to the owner about his plans. There were men running earth movers in this field, but he said he intended to continue farming here though he lived elsewhere. He gave me permission to walk the property and photograph. He told me about the crumbling graveyard in the middle of the field behind me, and though I went back several times afterward, I never saw him again.  The detailing on the barn was crude, but I liked the bold proportions of the two cupolas, like no others I've seen. Because overstated, they work especially well in silhouette. The lower level was flooded, but the owner told me he hoped to save it.  When I went by this fall all the barns were gone.

I could have removed the power lines from this image and have done as much in other images, but such wires are a common feature of farmland, and I liked their relation to the local pole beside the barn. Was it put there in 1914 to bring the first electricity from the new Housatonic power grid in Falls Village. This was a family farm, and from the rambling sprawl of the house, I suspect it encompassed several generations. Usually I know something of the history of barns I photograph, but I know nothing of this one, and now it's gone. I must make a pilgrimage to the cemetery to see if the names are legible now.  

I can still hear one photo instructor asking me why I bother to take such photographs. I dunno.  I just do. Perhaps it's just for the record.

For the New Year

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  It's hard for me to believe that I've been making entries to this blog for a full six years, that this is the 973rd photograph I've posted.  My sole aim when I began was to challenge myself to a program of self-improvement by  committing to post a new photo daily (at least every third day) and to try to make each photograph better than the previous one.

The role of this written journal has evolved. It has always been a place for me to leave notes to myself and to record thoughts on photographic issues and to discuss what happened on the shoot.  More and more it has become a place for me to react in an expressive manner to the photograph posted and often to try to make photo and text speak as a whole.  The first draft of "Prison," was composed in these journals, and at least since then it has come to feel like a kind of failure when the text portion is less ambitious than the visual.  That new challenge has slowed down the production of new postings and has often played an, arguably, improper role in the picture selected for the day.  To remedy that, I resolve to forgive myself for more frequently posting a picture without any journal entry.

I will also recall that, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," and will forgive myself in advance the foolishness of my excesses. I will repeat Blake's words thrice daily to inoculate myself against the arrogance of foolishness.

A final issue occurs to me regarding this blog.  The daily stream of photographs created by a blog has its own story-telling rhythm. It is totally unlike the experience of looking at images in an exhibition or in a photo book.  Daily posting is less tolerant of images that rely on their context with other images to exert their full meaning.  By posting a single image at a time, every image seeks autonomy.  That's part of what makes producing this blog a valuable challenge for me.  However, as in the images shared from travels, and as I look toward books, I sometimes feel the need to post supporting images, images that fill in a bit of background to the larger story.  If in the future I make more supporting posts, the test for posting on the blog remains to try never to post an image that I would not enjoy framing, hanging, and looking at on my wall.

Many thanks to all those who look and/or read sometimes, all the time or from tim to time, and especially thanks to all those who occasionally send word to tell me what they thought about or especially liked or would like to see differently.  So begins year seven.