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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty Six: Adding or subtracting context to clarify or extend meaning > Abandoned power cleaver, Bandon, Oregon, 2006
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12-JUN-2006

Abandoned power cleaver, Bandon, Oregon, 2006

This old powered cleaver is one of the few pieces of industrial machinery left in an abandoned meat-packing plant that were able to photograph. I moved this image from description to expressive industrial geometry by abstracting it, removing its blade and including only its eloquent industrial housing. By taking away the blade of the saw and the room where it hangs, I am removing functional context. Yet at the very same time, I am also adding context by stressing the words inscribed on its facing which restores both function and origins. By converting this image from color to black and white, I am also altering context by changing its form – the image becomes less real, and more symbolic of a time that has passed.

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Phil Douglis05-Jul-2006 06:24
You know my style by now, Mo -- I like to make the past live by bringing life and beauty to decaying relics such as this old power cleaver. This image reminds me of the kind of black and white photographs Fortune Magazine used to publish in the 1930s. Only those pictures were interpreting industrial machinery that at the time was state of the art equipment. The same machine today is but a memory of a long gone industrial era.
monique jansen05-Jul-2006 05:43
Another one of your favorite photos of abandonment, decay, relics of the past, conveying a sense of history.
Phil Douglis29-Jun-2006 00:25
It's fascinating that you see this cleaver as "more real" because of its black and white abstract presentation, while my intent was to make it look less real, and therefore more symbolic. But apparently the image works for you because of its hard, black and white edge. Perhaps there is indeed a cruel reality to be reckoned with here -- this is a machine that was used to hack apart once living creatures.
Iris Maybloom (irislm)28-Jun-2006 21:29
By turning this into black and white, the image,for me, has become more real and, even though bladeless, expresses a heightened feeling of danger enhanced by the words "cleaver action."
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