The Story Behind the Print
I captured this scene after discovering the massive, forgotten face of an old commercial coal furnace preserved in the basement of a historic brick building in downtown Franklin, Indiana. Sitting in the deep, undisturbed silence of the cellar, the entire unit held a monumental physical presence that instantly stopped me in my tracks. What drew me in was the incredible quality of early 20th-century industrial craftsmanship—specifically the bold, embossed typography and the raised patent date from December 14, 1915, cast directly into the heavy iron doors. Since this photograph was made, the furnace has been permanently walled over and covered up, transitioning this print into an irreplaceable visual record of a hidden structural artifact that is now completely gone from view.
I chose a flat, straight-on, and dead-center camera position to allow the mechanical symmetry of the furnace to speak entirely for itself. Rendered in a classic, deep monochromatic palette, the composition strips away any modern distraction to focus completely on pure graphic weight, alignment, and texture. The soft, ambient light skims across the face of the metal, highlighting the profound honesty of a utilitarian object carrying decades of layered history—from the pitted surfaces and soot-covered edges to the functional hinges, heavy levers, and individual rivets that lock the massive assembly together.
The 5x7 View Camera Process
This image was captured using a traditional large-format view camera and a single sheet of 5x7-inch film, a slow, tactile, and highly disciplined workflow out in the field. Composing an industrial scene of this complexity through a bellows system and focusing on the ground glass demands absolute precision to ensure every text line and mechanical boundary remains perfectly squared and parallel to the lens. There is no digital stitching, modern distortion correction, or artificial sharpening; it is a single, authentic exposure preserved entirely in camera. The original 5x7 negative captures an extraordinary amount of microscopic detail and organic film grain, creating a tactile print that carries the true physical weight and substance of the raw cast iron.