NOW at the Waterbury Library

Photographs from the continuing series, "Brass Valley Made in America," are on exhibition at the Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury, from June 3 to July 31.

An Invitation
WHEN: June 19th at 6:30 PM
WHERE: Silas Bronson Library, Waterbury (http://www.bronsonlibrary.org/)
WHAT: Emery Roth will show slides, talk about his experiences, and read poems and stories from the draft of his book on Brass Valley. For three years Mr. Roth has been following the old railroad tracks and photographing among ruins and in the last working brass mill in the Naugatuck Valley. Thanks to the existence of a unique extruder, one brass mill continues operation. It is the last descendent of American Brass with functioning mill buildings in Ansonia and Waterbury. Mr. Roth's photographs capture the men and equipment at work, the large casting furnaces, the extruder, pickling tanks, draw benches, annealers still functioning in a facility that has been making brass tube since before WW I.


Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Blacksmith's Hand

JOHN ROSENTHAL: "As a fledgling street photographer strolling up and down the streets of cities, I quickly became aware of Time and its erosive power. My early photographs focused almost exclusively on the signs of an older culture that was holding on for dear life. I'd photograph seltzer bottles in old wooden crates piled high in a truck, or the dusty windows of Jewish bread shops, or old men building February fires on the beaches of Coney Island. My interest was more than documentary, for it seemed to me that what was about to vanish was important and irreplaceable, and frankly, I wanted my photographs to offer, in some manner, the power of resuscitation. Actually, I still do, though I no longer believe that photographs can prevent the homely past from being plowed under; rather, I believe that photographs - especially good photographs that compel our interest - help us to remember; and even more importantly, they help us to decide what is worth remembering."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: What makes a picture? Is it this old Buffalo Forge blower, No. 625. I found one like it in a 1908 Buffalo Forge catalogue on the internet. Before hand blowers like this became available in the 1880s the blacksmith would have needed a large bellows and an assistant to work the iron.

Or is it about where the blower was in the room, the arrangement of hearth, blower, anvil that let the blacksmith's work flow?

Or should the photo rather be about where it was in the rectangle of the picture - not really about the blower or the blacksmith at all but a pleasing and harmonious composition of forms, colors, textures, light?

 If the photo can transcend the place, can it conjure the absent hand that turned the crank to deliver the blast of air that made the coals glow and superheated the metal in the forge until the blacksmith saw it turn the right color, lifted it from the forge, and turned to the anvil to begin his hammering?

And can it capture at the same time that absent hand and the quiet that dwells in the shop now and haunts this old farm?
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