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SILENCED
multi-wheel factory machine
I was driving back to Seattle from Ocean Shores, a town out on the coast of Washington, when my friend who is riding shotgun, says to pull over in the nearby parking lot. We are in Aberdeen, WA, a formerly bustling lumber town just a few skips away from the Pacific Ocean. Still a going concern in lumber and shingles, Aberdeen is one of those coastal towns that is hanging in there, although many of the jobs have followed the remaining timber stands that are now found elsewhere.
My friend wanted fresh produce from a stand she knew was set- up in the parking lot. I park, and then I notice what looks like some rather old factory buildings across the parking lot, in the opposite direction from the produce stand. I grab my camera and go to look around.
In an alley behind these mostly two story buildings, I discover a large machine mounted on a block of cement. It looks like maybe an engine, but it has to be attached somehow to another machine to accomplish any work, as far as I can guess. It seems strange, this big machine, BIG RED, not connected to anything and just sitting out alone in the salt air of the back alley. Rust is beginning to find foot holds in the wheel and around the bumpy cogs.
Each building here in the alley, looks out from a wall of glass, and each tall window in this wall contaiis numerous smaller window panes. I look closely at the individual panes of glass, and wonder what these FACTORY EYES might reveal. It was only later, when creating my photo images from this brief shoot, that I sense what might be the years some of the workers must have spent on the inside of this building. Dirty, old and beginning to crumble, the building cement shows every encounter had with a paint brush or an untimely repair. It is a façade, within which time passed and lives were lived. A place of human labor, assisted by a yard full of machinery now left to rust away to nothing. This is not a sad place; it is a very human place.
Around the corner from the alley, on the opposite side of the wall with windows, is a garden of sorts. Set down in almost a haphazard graveyard-like fashion, is a selection of machinery. In this yard, outside of the factory DAY DOOR, machines of all shapes and sizes; rail car wagons, COG WHEELs and scraps of rusted metal, repose. Like a purse hastily emptied of its contents, the factory’s past is simply and unceremoniously scattered on the ground. Clearly, the machines and the hand trucks, and the other useful working things out there in the yard, no longer in fact had a use. The machines now simply rest and rust. The factory workers hopefully, found a living elsewhere.
These images are bold, weighty and colorful. At home in an office, or office building, factory or production plant, or displayed on an interior wall as part of the living space design in a home or loft, each image is unique. For me, the story of human labor is behind each image, and this is perhaps the most powerful aspect in all of the images. Thanks, Lori Kay
TINY SURPRISE
Thunder and lightning are not typical on Vashon Island. This Island, lying in the waters of Puget Sound in Washington State with Seattle on the mainland to the north and Tacoma to the south, is subject to rain certainly, lots of rain, but rarely lightning. Besides, Vashon Island is home to lots of one-hundred-plus-foot Douglas Fir and Hemlock trees, very few of which show the signs of meeting up with a wood shattering lightning bolt.
On a day early this Fall, while I was driving on the east side of the Island, I looked over toward the Cascade Mountain Range coming into view. At once I notice the sky is broadcasting a clear warning. On this otherwise sunny and clear day, the sky now carried a dark blue, an almost jet black, streak of cloud layered neatly alongside of the typical puffy popcorn white rain clouds. I stop my pick-up truck, and reach for my camera.
An expanse of sea water in Puget Sound separates us from Seattle, Mount Rainer and the Cascade Mountain Range to the east. Normally, only a 20 minute ferry boat ride is needed to get you across to the mainland, but if the wind is up and the swell grows so that the top of each crest is blown into fans of spray, well, it can be a bumpy ride. The scene now before me out across this water looks threatening, like the imminent start of a 20 knot blow. But, oddly when I get out of my truck I notice that the air is nearly calm. Even the intense blue black band of color in the sky appears to stand still, gathering in readiness.
This summer on Vashon Island was truly wonderful. For us in this northwest reach of the lower forty-eight states, a great summer means not much rain fell and that lots of sun made it through the clouds to warm us up. But, this is September now and the sky that I am looking at is a reminder of the storms to come; the cold rain, the winter ice and the snow. A couple of men, fishing out on the nearby dock, seem to sense the foreboding presence of this blue black filling in those otherwise familiar white clouds. I could almost feel each of them in turn make an accessing glance up from their fishing lines to the sky, and gauge the likely danger posed by this darkening cloud. The men return to fishing while I start to photograph this sky.
As I start to take photographs, a sail boat tied to a nearby anchor buoy in the water just off shore from me, begins to ride the swell as the sky above begins to move closer to shore. In a moment, almost unperceptively, the cloud ceiling lowers toward the water. Suddenly, a pinpoint of bright sunlight flashes down from the sky onto the water, and right there a terribly small, a tiny, tiny little rainbow appears. It makes a direct hit amidships as the little rainbow delicately hovers over the rocking sail boat at anchor. The tiny little rainbow lingeres only briefly, and then vanishes. Further off shore, the lightening now begins its’ dance over the water. We watched the now fast moving storm heading away further north. And, only now do we begin to hear the thunder roll, trumpeting the certain arrival of Fall.
Oh, I also took a photograph. Best regards, lorikay.
A CHANCE MEETING WITH A TINY STORM SURPRISE
Posted in View just past the rearview mirror