Oil Can, 2025

As a photographer I am interested in people, places, and things. These interests did not change with the pandemic and sequestration, but the opportunity to pursue them did. The  people I was sequestered with were not all that eager to be photographed over and over again, and the places I was sequestered in tended to be private rather than public. As a photographer trying to stay photographically fit, I was obliged to rely almost exclusively on “things” as subjects — on still lifes.

The still-life genre is one I have always been interested in but had not spent much time exploring. With the Covid shutdown, I started to take a more attentive look. I began with a carefully edited inventory of household goods — a pitcher, a coffee mug, a magnifying glass — then moved on to something a bit more “abstract”: a study of forms — the ball, the cylinder, and the cube. I have continued to make sporadic visits to the genre ever since. These forays are collected in my photographic archive under the title “Miscellaneous.” In this mélange I have noticed a subset of items that seem to be of particular interest to me — a subset of items obliquely related to art’s “readymade,” a subset of items I refer to as “industrials.”

Lever, 2025

The “readymade” is a prefabricated object isolated from its intended use — a “found object” kept because the keeper found something intrinsically interesting in it. The term was purportedly coined by the pipe-puffing prince of French hauteur Marcel Duchamp somewhere around 1916. The mysterious relationship of context to “art” is the foundational concern of the idea. An item placed in a new context takes on a new meaning. For instance, Duchamp’s most famous readymade was a porcelain urinal he titled Fountain. It is one thing in a men’s room, something else entirely on display in a museum gallery.

My “industrials” are a subset of the readymade. They are sculpted objects closely related to basic industry. They appeal to me for their aesthetic qualities — both functional and frivolous. I am fascinated by the engineer’s wizardry and the hocus pocus of the creative impulse. Each item tells a story. For some the story is about technology — the march of the machine. For me, it is temporal — the march of time, the chronological and intellectual distances traversed. These items are emphatically themselves; their brazen solidity stands in stark contrast to the diaphanous world of gigabytes and amperage. They are brass and cast-iron emissaries from the past.

The “industrial,” like the “readymade,” is found art — and, as it turns out, there is a lot of it to be found at Old Portland Hardware in Sellwood. Not long ago I did a photographic tour of this hidden museum. I’ve gone back several times since and have collected a number of items for my own ever-expanding cabinet of curiosities. Some of those items you see photographed above and below.

While I have taken an atypical approach here (available light paired with selective focus), my aspirations have remained largely the same. I have sought to produce a decent photograph — in this case, a photograph that not only acknowledges the medium’s allegiance to reality, but one that offers a gauzy glimpse of the magic in the mundane, a glimpse of the secret life of salvage.

Sconce, 2025

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Steam Whistle, 2025

Sconce, Whistle, Lever, 2025

Iron, 2025

Bell, 2025

Blowtorch, 2025

Oil Can, Iron, Bell, 2025

Cobblers Shoe Form, 2025

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