Aeons ago, when I first started shooting MF3d, I set my sights on an abandoned textile mill in downtown Charlottesville. Frank IX & Sons made various textiles there until 1999. What’s amazing to me is that, though I lived in the area, and would have cycled past it almost every day in the mid to late 90’s on my way to work, I was completely oblivious of its existence until after the turn of the century, when I was looking for things to shoot in MF3d. Only now, having read some history on it (for this post!), do I realize that when I took these pictures, the mill must have been shut down just one or two years prior. Indeed, just a few years after my several photo expeditions there, the building was nearly completely removed, and what remains of it is now the centerpiece of an art park, including two breweries (one for sake, the other for beer) and some other social gathering places.
Anyway, on to these two pictures… I had done some exploring and photographing in the vast main hall and then continued to poke and probe ever deeper into the ruins of this structure. At one point I saw a hatch in the factory floor, with a steep ladder descending into blackness. Of course, I had to check that out! At the very bottom, in the faintest of light, I discerned the most amazing scene: a basement, or maybe it should be called a subbasement, that was completely flooded with water. Using a tripod that could hold my cameras very close to this watery surface, I was able to obtain images of the room, where everything above the water was perfectly reflected in the water itself, creating this symmetrical surrealism.
I think this “early” MF3d work was shot with a Sputnik borrowed from my friend Chuck Holzner (RIP), with whom I’d gone to the Buffalo 3D-con the year before? (around 2000) Shot at probably f22, with at least a 30 second exposure time, maybe more… I can recall only that I was worried about reciprocity failure in this film, but that I did not know the numbers. The only light source was a small window far to the left, that opened onto some kind of light-well. The slide gives you a view such as you would experience only with dark-adapted eyesight.
