Springtime

Hypothesis

Wherewithal

Retrospection

Articulation

A very happy holiday to all.

Digression

Footsteps

Bottom of the Shaft

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: 

Factory Lift Part II

I'd like to be the guy that unwinds time.

He sits above the stars and sees time fall

like a blizzard sweeping across an empty plain.

or sifted flour to raise daily bread.

It's only pulleys and weights, that's all it is.

a trick of leverage, tomorrows and yesterdays.

YOU ARE INVITED TO:

Silk 'n Style

by Emery Roth II

with Rick Pauline and Dawn Dingee

discussion & presentation

The Klotz Throwing Mill in Lonaconing, Maryland, is an accidentally preserved, "gilded age" silk mill from the beginning of the 20th century. View it through the eyes of eight photographers who traveled there in two groups in the past year. Consider how different eyes convert the experience of the mill into still images, learn about the region, and join a discussion as we consider whether Style matters.

WHEN: Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 7:00 PM

WHERE: The Housatonic Camera Club

Noble Horizons, 17 Cobble Road, Salisbury, CT

Silkiness

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  

Orchid Lust

Silk is slippery.

It murmurs in 

plush, Victorian syllables

that shimmer like gossamer.

Swaddled in purple velvet's 

downy cushion 

we remember that silkiness begins in the guise of a moth 

or a burrowing worm or tentacled arachnids, poised and still.

Skeletons in the Closet

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: In a world of Victorian spindles and knobs, gears and sprockets, these pressure cookers look out of place, and, in fact, I've seen no other photographs of them despite the number of photographers that have passed here. Why is that?

They might be Gothic instruments of torture in a Victorian silk mill mystery, Holmes arriving before the pressure meter that runs from minus 30 through plus 60 has fully reset to an ambiguous zero, and only he knows if the sad victim was steamed like a lobster or slowly depressurized.

How did these serve the more acceptable aims of the silk barons?  Did they set the dyes, or did they shrink and tighten the silk fibers the way the annealer uses moist heat to repair the crystal structure in stressed brass? How little I know about the ways of raw silk! Where would we need to look to find someone who would know how to use this equipment today? The rust and stillness of the mill beg the question.

Factory Lift

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Factory Lift

I'm not sure I ever noticed how 

much elevators are a lot like clocks.

Pulleys and weights, that's all they are, 

and the right grease to make them glide. 

One is set to lift a load. 

The other leverages our hours. 

Ours,

if we can buy them back 

at the end of the haul. 

Four hours in two shifts plus food stamps. 

Of course, we can always use the stairs. 

I'd like to be the guy that drives the elevator, 

propped on his stool, floor numbers in his head, 

with his wrist twisted around the handle that levitates us. 

He knows to within 30 trips 

plus or minus 

how many trips he makes each week, 

and figuring market cycles roughly, 

he can tell you how many trips he will have to make 

'til his last ride in twenty-three years, 

so many months, weeks, days hence. 

He's steady, and he never uses the stairs.

Gilded Age Gilding

PHOTGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I think Charlie was the first to put the shoes by the chair, maybe the umbrella as well, but there are always new still-life set-ups appearing here. As I got to the top of the stair, Charlie's still life was in front of me, though Charlie was gone. He appeared as I began to play with the elements he had left, rearranging them to make use of what I liked in the excellent southwest light. Rick and others followed later as we all selected from three floors of silk mill factory that had become a time-capsule sealed in July of 1957 and only recently opened. Time stopped here, and we had come to photograph it and compose it and process it into finished images.

Bespindled and Bebobbined

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Snapshot

It is a silken circus

bespindled and bebobbined

of Victorian, industrial clatter.

to capture the whole, 3-ring show-

silken filament streaking

bobbins bobbing,

flywheels winging,

and the steam calliope!

and to also eyeball every sprocket,

savor the nattering and shuttling

of the tiniest cog

in the unbroken linkage

between initial cause

intermediate event

and ultimate purpose,

and to show it in a photograph.

Something of their World

"Work benches, tables, and chests of drawers are stocked with sundry medicines like eyewash, mercurochrome, and spirits of ammonia. Even the workers' toilets suggest something of their world: eight stalls shared two rolls of paper, mounted on the outside. Faded, gaudy, umbrellas are tucked everywhere and women's shoes—perhaps thirty pair-—are hung on spindles and tossed into tag bins. They are all early fifties style, with pointed toes, chunky heels, and well-creased insteps, thrown aside by workers after eight or more hours of moving up and down the mill aisles. What took place here?" 

from The Klotz Throwing Company in Lonaconing: Opening Tut's Tomb by Rebecca M. Trussell

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The bathroom was excessively dark, almost beyond shooting. For that reason, I dismissed it when I discovered it late on my first visit. However the rusty doors were interesting, and with time now, I decided to try to make something of them.  There  was a grungy beauty about the place, but it was an awkward space to shoot, and in the end, it was just a bathroom.  

To catch a shot that added context, I squeezed into the corner of the room, my unfolded tripod creasing me into the corner while I tried not to think about what I was squeezing into. This was the second floor on the leaky corner of the building. The roof was failing just here above the third floor. While shooting I used a flashlight to paint a bit of additional light.

The shot speaks well to the quotation.  Whether it has anything of its own to add to the conversation, I'm unsure.