Friday, May 7, 2010
Back in the Saddle.
Industrial sorts in a hurry tend to build and abandon, moving on to fresh ground when clutter has gone from structure to impedance. They leave in their wake moldering wood and rusted machines all liberally covered in graffiti for some weird compulsive reason. These forms are immensely interesting to photograph, and so I've undertaken a photographic project on these objects and their relationship to the river that a lot of them stick into, out from, or over.
Follow the Henderson Bridge eastward over the Providence River, and then climb down to the east bank; the first thing you see will be overgrown train tracks and the skeleton of an abandoned freight car. Fittings, levers and rattling chain are all intact, but covered uniformly in red-brown rust (and the initials of some guy JM, who was either very possessive or insecure). Interestingly, satellite images of the area show no sign of a railcar. I have a pet theory that over the course of the last few years somebody painstakingly rolled this thing here from miles away, until they hit a cement traffic divider laid across the tracks that they could not pass.
A few miles north is a bridge of criss-crossing steel I-beams reaching between two stone abutments some 150 feet apart. This, too, is a uniform rust-brown color, but no less sturdy or reassuring for this or its age--1910 is carved into a block in the far abutment. Yow.
By the bridge, down in the riverbed beneath it, is a metal structure in a much more progressed state of decay, probably because it's sitting in water rather than up above it. It consists of a metal sheet roof on two beams held above the disarticulated gears and splines of an immovable machine. I looked at it for a long time, and took a few photographs (maybe I'll scan some prints into future posts--no digital images because I still can't find the memory card in the 1970 Nikon F2). I could not divine the function of this machine--there was an oversize bicycle chain for the pulling of some gear, and a screen or mesh of some sort, and two immense pipes heading out of the bank and then straight down into the murky water. For those curious, these last two things are at 41°50'20.01"N, 71°22'8.32"W. Geocachers?
It's gotten my interest, this project. It's already produced some interesting images, and I'm sure there are many more yet to come.
Other ideas: I believe that there are two layers to the world. The topmost is the visible, apparent, the status quo. It has a magnetic draw, and unless I know and hold it in my mind, it it will insidiously and subconsciously draw me back to the surface. The second layer is hidden; it is the spectacular buried in mundanity, the magic embedded in absolutely everything. There is something there to hold onto, and I feel it is something vital that I will not be whole without. Also Rowan Atkinson is friggin' hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFGrQMD6Uqc
Follow the Henderson Bridge eastward over the Providence River, and then climb down to the east bank; the first thing you see will be overgrown train tracks and the skeleton of an abandoned freight car. Fittings, levers and rattling chain are all intact, but covered uniformly in red-brown rust (and the initials of some guy JM, who was either very possessive or insecure). Interestingly, satellite images of the area show no sign of a railcar. I have a pet theory that over the course of the last few years somebody painstakingly rolled this thing here from miles away, until they hit a cement traffic divider laid across the tracks that they could not pass.
A few miles north is a bridge of criss-crossing steel I-beams reaching between two stone abutments some 150 feet apart. This, too, is a uniform rust-brown color, but no less sturdy or reassuring for this or its age--1910 is carved into a block in the far abutment. Yow.
By the bridge, down in the riverbed beneath it, is a metal structure in a much more progressed state of decay, probably because it's sitting in water rather than up above it. It consists of a metal sheet roof on two beams held above the disarticulated gears and splines of an immovable machine. I looked at it for a long time, and took a few photographs (maybe I'll scan some prints into future posts--no digital images because I still can't find the memory card in the 1970 Nikon F2). I could not divine the function of this machine--there was an oversize bicycle chain for the pulling of some gear, and a screen or mesh of some sort, and two immense pipes heading out of the bank and then straight down into the murky water. For those curious, these last two things are at 41°50'20.01"N, 71°22'8.32"W. Geocachers?
It's gotten my interest, this project. It's already produced some interesting images, and I'm sure there are many more yet to come.
Other ideas: I believe that there are two layers to the world. The topmost is the visible, apparent, the status quo. It has a magnetic draw, and unless I know and hold it in my mind, it it will insidiously and subconsciously draw me back to the surface. The second layer is hidden; it is the spectacular buried in mundanity, the magic embedded in absolutely everything. There is something there to hold onto, and I feel it is something vital that I will not be whole without. Also Rowan Atkinson is friggin' hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFGrQMD6Uqc
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