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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty One: Ruins and wrecks: photographing the rusted, busted past > Tractor, Gold King Mine, Haynes, Arizona, 2007
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06-AUG-2007

Tractor, Gold King Mine, Haynes, Arizona, 2007

Haynes is strewn with rusting mining equipment, including an ancient Caterpillar tractor. Instead of describing the entire tractor, I stress its ruination by moving in to define its rust and decay. What once rumbled and roared as it scoured the earth to reveal its riches, now corrodes in silence. I wanted this image to evoke the spirit of this mine and the ghost town that now surrounds its ruins.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/400s f/6.3 at 12.0mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis16-Aug-2007 23:07
Thanks for coming back to this one, Ceci, to see it in the context of its present use. It is indeed a piece of living history -- a rusting behemoth from another time.
Guest 16-Aug-2007 22:26
The ghost town and its "providing a living for its owners" is indeed a different twist for this old machinery, as well as a kind of time capsule to show what sort of earth movers were available "back then." So it's living history, as well as living "rustory." You capture the massive nature of the tractor most palpably, specially since it features a large spring -- something that takes a lot of applied technology to create. I like your comment that "it now corrodes in silence."
Phil Douglis13-Aug-2007 17:24
Thanks, Ceci, for this observation. You are right -- in many of these cases, the decaying object was created and used to serve the greed of man. But in this case, there is an additional twist to the story. Yes, the gold, copper and silver ran out here -- and this huge tractor was rendered obsolete overnight. However today it is part of a ghost town that charges a modest four dollar admission charge to view (and photograph) this crumbling machine and many others like it. So yes, it is slowly being devoured by nature. Yet while it is rusting away, it still provides a living for its owners.
Guest 13-Aug-2007 04:08
This feels to me like some sort of poetic justice, showing how even once mighty "cutting edge" technology is subject to the ravages of nature, and in time will corrode to flakes of dust and disappear entirely. This kind of machinery is what gave white men dominance over the unspoiled landscapes of the West, allowing them to ravage the earth to get what they wanted, while leaving all sorts of trash behind. but when the money or the water or something else ran out, these metal contraptions were abandoned to the elements, as seen in this portrayal of power gone to rust. I always get a kind of thrill out of such images, where man has literally been put in his place by forces way mightier than his own, where even the most clever inventions go the way of all organic matter. I love the color, the clarity of the structural details, and the obvious disintegration portrayed in your picture, Phil!
Phil Douglis12-Aug-2007 01:34
Thanks, Tim -- this image was made in Jerome, near Sedona -- a long way from the Grand Canyon. Yet like the Canyon, this image expresses something made with time -- in this case, rust. And yes, it is a landscape, an industrial landscape.
Tim May11-Aug-2007 23:42
I think you also evoke the spirit of a canyon. This is tractor as landscape.
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