The Foundry

Grips

Most people drive from point A to point B with little thought to the structures that can be seen along the road, let alone what might be discovered among some of the non-descriptive side streets that appear as just another dead end. Yet it is in such locations I had hoped of finding exquisite textures, accidental random patterns having turned into abstracts that would please my visual senses and the esthetic ideal of an undisclosed beauty.

A few months after my open-heart surgery it was necessary for me to travel several weeks on a regular bases to Berkeley, when I had decided to explore the area between Berkeley and Emeryville. There are a number of small streets that branched off Fourth Street, where a number of industrial businesses and warehouses can be found.

Luminescence and the beast

On my very first excursion I had discovered a unique site with an open shipping gate and no visible individuals around to keep me from having entered. To me, this was and is nothing more than a green light, an invitation to continue, so I had ventured passed the gate and cautiously explored the premises.


Besides the large main building, there were two smaller structures, all empty of machinery or anything else, however for me I had just discovered an abundance of textures, but it would need to be ignored in favor of the architecture and the surrounding ambiance. For the site resembled either a slacher or futuristic film set in which survivors of the human race battling each other over petroleum or other rare commodity. I had discovered a photographers dream and I had been standing right in the middle of it.

Thor’s mighty hammer

A couple days later I had returned, trying to gain access once more in order to focus on some other interior areas I was previously had been unable to capture, because on my last visit, all three memory cards were filled, but the day I returned, everything unfortunately was sealed off tighter than a drum.

Not wanting to be discouraged I had decided to seek out other possible sites in the area only to be rewarded beyond my wildest dreams. On this one street I had discovered three different businesses I knew I would want to spend numerous hours, if not days, exploring and capturing the kind of images I had always admired and studied.

The earth shaker

In previous times I would just have just trespassed because when I had asked for permission, the answer received was always a resounding ‘No’, so it come as a huge surprise when two of the firms I asked, said they would check with the property owner and for me to call back after few days.


The situation at the last company was very different as the owner himself approved my request, which allowed me to proceed to the warehouse immediately, where I quickly set out capturing the very shots I felt were beyond my reach.


A week later I called Coulter Forge and learned that I had been given the opportunity to photograph and upon my return visit, John, one of the managers, showed me around the grounds and we agreed on some fundamental ground rules for my safety.

A menagerie of tools

Whenever the weather was overcast and I had the energy—considering I was still in recovery—I would stop off at the front office of Coulter Forge and ask if it were all right to take some more photographs. By now I had also learned what clothing to wear, especially how to protect the shoes from the materials that covered the ground of the foundry, however my tripod was another matter and always required cleaning after each visit.


Over the next couple of months there were about five, maybe six visits to the foundry and every time it felt like seeing an old friend, as the surroundings and I became more comfortable with each other.


No longer being dazzled by the location, I had been able to see beyond the machinery and discover the intimacy of many years and the many hands that had left their mark and were now being ‘written by light’ into images the mind beheld when the camera had been positioned on the tripod.

Matrix and punches

The first couple of visits the focus had been on the over all environment and the larger machinery, with subsequent returns this had shifted towards discovering the human elements, like the tools they used day in and day out or any personal belongs accidentally left behind and forgotten.


Even though the workshop is dusty and dirty from all the different metal fragments, there was a certain charm and beauty that I found totally irresistible.


It has now been almost three years since I last visited the plant and at some point I would like to go back to arrange a time and capture individual portraits of the crew, for as one looks at these pictures it feels like the nineteen forties or the fifties if not even earlier in the century.

Tools of the trade

I also cannot help but wondering how much longer such an industry as this can remain in business as it competes against a global economy or the rapid technological changes and yet I feel that if we lose such a place as Coulter Forge to modernization, we lose not only a place of business where everyone is family, we endure a far greater loss of human possibilities and endurance.

Numeric punches

This post is part of the series: We are all Addicted to our Past . . .
All images taken with a Sony DSC-V1, full frame

A Film to Inspire - A Film for Learning - A Film to Change a Life

I prefer to watch a movie in the form of a DVD even though I will miss the widescreen experience; this is offset by a host of advantages not to be had in a theater. One is the personal connection between film and viewer, allowing close study of all the various elements that comprise the making of a film and apart from the obvious, a very good movie not only entertains us, but through its cinematography we are visually stimulated. The adjacent soundtrack allows our spirit to temporarily wonder off and contemplate on our own creative ‘cold case files’ of previous inspirations upon which we never acted, other than undergo a thought process.

A film like Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) with Orson Wells and Joseph Cotton teach us much about camera angles, lighting of a scene, film editing and if we pause the motion, study an isolated frame, we can review the composition, the lighting, décor and the actors placements.

Movies are not only a photographer’s friend, but any creative person who is willing to explore a film’s other features beyond the obvious will only gain from the experience, even when it is negative. In the end it is the accumulative effect that shapes our own thoughts even when they take years or decades to mature. Films have always played an integral part in my life for as long as I can remember, photography remained a passion of mine, as I ventured down another road as an illustrator and then graphic designed before taking up photography professionally.

Most men who take up fashion or glamour photography do so in order to meet women and I guess I did in some way too, considering almost twenty years earlier I was captivated very much with the rolls between David Hemmings as photographer and his counterpart model Veruschka von Lehndorff (who played herself) in Michelangelo Antonioni ‘Pop Art’ film Blow Up, (1966). Of course it also helped that I identified with David Hemming in regards to ‘looking a lot like a younger version of him’ if not at least similar to him.

Yet the movie Blow Up had an enormous influencing upon me as I decided to pursue the line of photographer, I began studying European fashion magazines. It was more than just looking at pictures; it was about learning cutting edge styling and the settings in which these models where portrayed. Yet it goes a little deeper, for I started taken a magnifying loupe to these magazine reproductions, looking at the models pupils in order to study the photographers lighting set up that was reflected in their eyes.

Apart from paying close attention to contemporary commercial photography, I was fascinated by the Hollywood glamour photographer of the film noir era George Hurrell and then there is my idol and hero Irving Penn and his use of natural northern light upon his subjects.

Today I use American and foreign films as a shot of steroids to boost my imagination and of other creative urges.

When I want to be inspired by the use of certain colour palette for an abstract painting, I may choose to watch Bernardo Bertolucci The Last Emperor (1987) or Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and especially Yimou Zhang’s House of Flying Daggers (2004) come to mind; even David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1963) can be added to the list.

On the other hand for the more traditional or classical inspiration, Peter Webber’s 2004 film The Girl with a Pearl Earring comes to mind, despite the films poor script and lack luster acting, it does excel in imagery as almost every scene is a Flemish painting that has come to life. For fans of the revolutionary painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, the film Mad Love by Vincente Aranda offers plenty of scenes to study for lighting and composition, in addition to being well acted and meticulously crafted, it is a pleasure to watch this film more than once.

Of course there are many other movies fulfilling different and specific personal situations and depending upon ones needs, there is a film out there for you.

Regardless if one is a photographer, artist, designer, or even a writer, movies should be viewed more than just as entertainment, consider film a tool just as important as ones favorite paintbrush, camera, notebook or fountain pen.

The Artist Journal

Symphony Nr. 1 — Red Dawn, 2008 O/C

July 22, 2007 was the day I started painting again after a five-year absence. It was on my daughter’s sixteenth surprise birthday party that I pulled out a 36 x 36 x 1½ inch canvas which previously had been given five coats of gesso, was now finally being covered with various shades of acrylic crimson including a variety of other rich and deep yellows. The painting would later be finished in multiple layers oil paint that was thinned down with Winsor & Newton’s ‘Liquin’ in order to produce a smooth glass like surface.

After a couple of weeks the painting would be named ‘Symphony Number One—Red Dawn’ and this would be followed by two more paintings of the same size.

Symphony Nr. 2 — The Nocturnal Suite, 2008 MM-O/C

Two weeks later after having started ‘Red Dawn’, I began —what I consider now to be the most important tool in my arsenal of paints and brushes—a journal.

The next nineteen months these journal entries would not only reflect the progress of a painting, its technical challenges or ideas for others but most important of all, I began writing about creative issues and questioning what was my purpose for creating art in the first place, other than an internal urge to do so. Ultimately this then lead into my developing a personal mythology, including a set of symbols imbedding through the use of materials that then would begin to define my work, a process that still continues to this very day.

The journal does more than just record the events the artist sees fit to acknowledge, it is the very process of writing that one might consider to be the most valuable.

Symphony Nr. 3 — The Clash of Titans, 2008 MM-O/C

Consider for one moment that we contemplate our next step in a painting. There is no interaction of that thought other than it remains being a thought, while acknowledging the thought by putting ink to paper, we are engaging in a process where thought and writing are interacting as if in a conversation and the act of contemplation no longer remains a solitary event.

Keeping a journal or notebook will over time appear less as an unpleasant task but more like as if meeting and old friend and catching up on events over a cup of tea or a glass of port or wine, especially if a beautiful leather bound book is selected and a pen that not only feels comfortable, but fits in the hand effortlessly and glides over the page with ease. Even going so far as to set aside a time and place to when and where one has that conversation adds to the experience.

Give it a try and I promise you will wonder how you ever did without it.