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