I was out strolling with a camera on the 4th of July when I noticed some older machinery behind a building that used to house a print shop, on the west side of downtown . I stepped into the old parking lot and looked around. There were a number of ancient mechanical devices that did things like fold printed paper to make brochures. Another machine was used, I think, for staple stitching brochures and booklets. Some were just like a vague puzzle with no starter clues. Perhaps an old school printing craftsman would have known exactly what each was for, even though they were beyond salvage.
The parts were mostly monochrome and dirty so I thought they'd render better in black and white. The Fuji camera I was using has a black and white profile called, Acros, and it tends to add sharpness and grain to make photos more like what we used to get from the wet darkroom. The profile also gets me closer to the way I like the tones to appear in black and white photos.
I spent a few minutes fiddling around with my photos and then moved on. It made me a little sad because I remember ink-on-paper printing very fondly. We used to do a lot of it when I worked in the advertising industry. I remember many a middle of the night press check. The smell of solvents, the viewing booths with their color corrected lighting, and even the little, folding printer's loupes that we used to check registration of the plates. That, and the endless clacking, and soft roar of the four and five color presses. To see parts of the old way cast aside after decades of daily use seemed like a repudiation of all the art and craft of a certain age. All the angst and loss captured by a digital camera, of a subject that was so relentlessly analog.
2 comments:
I have dealt with construction workers who literally backed their trucks over a flower garden to get six feet closer to the house they were remodeling. And the trucks were largely empty. I was once remodeling a house and repeatedly asked the construction guys to park around on the other side of the block, where there was plenty of on-street parking, but they refused to do it -- again, it wasn't because they had to move heavy tools, it was because they didn't want to walk a block. So instead, they parked half-blocking a narrow two-lane street, parked-in neighbors driveways, and got everybody in the neighborhood pissed at me. I secretly encouraged the neighbors to call the cops and ticket the illegal parkers -- secretly, because I didn't want the guys installing my electric stuff and toilets to know that I was responsible for their parking tickets. And the tickets outraged them, although they were causing traffic jams on the street and they could look and see the problems they were causing.
Gotta calm down. But I've extensively remodeled five houses now, in three different cities, and it's happened every time. In my experience, these guys literally do not give a flying f***. They will NOT walk a block.
--JC
You see that pile of machinery that has no use anymore? That is all internal combustion engines in about 10 more years. I sure won't miss the sounds and smells of gas engines roaring to life like they have been for the past 100 years. Bring on the future!
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