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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Four: The Workplace -- essence of a culture > Locomotive, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007
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20-FEB-2007

Locomotive, Death Valley National Park, California, 2007

This locomotive once hauled borax ore out of Death Valley. It has been retired to a yard behind the Death Valley Museum in Furnace Creek. It, too, was once a work place, but time and history have made it obsolete. Its once proud medallion is dripping rust, and its paint has cracked in the brutal summer sun that reaches 120 degrees (F). The brass medallion was once its birth certificate. Now it serves as its epitaph.

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Phil Douglis09-Mar-2007 20:14
Thanks, Aloha, for this expressive commentary. You grasped the essence of it. It is, as you say, about greatness passing -- the end of the age of coal and steam power. The Industrial Revolution of the 19th Century, and the great industrial boom of the 20th century were based on it. The railroads were at the core of economic greatness as well. As you so lucidly say, time has split an idea into facility and obsolesence here -- the guilded plate still glitters, but everything around it is decaying. As I noted in my caption, that plate was a birth certificate and is now an epitaph, not only for this locomotive, but for the Industrial Age itself.
Aloha Diao Lavina09-Mar-2007 04:06
I like the echoing colors of the rusty bits in this photograph. The medallion, still preening its past importance, has a brightness now given by the fact that it is rusty and decaying. This photograph talks about greatness passing, and how time splits an idea into facility and obsolescence.
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