The Mill

Yesterday, I photographed a closed-down mill. I have wanted to photograph the outside for months now, just haven’t gotten around to it. The mill opened in 1906 and was closed in 1963. It was a roller mill that produced flour, meal, and feed. I pulled up to the mill yesterday morning. There was a car outside and one of the side doors was open. I walked up and someone was working inside. I asked if it would be okay to take some photographs and the person said, “Sure. Do you want to photograph the inside too?”

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I have been invited into closed buildings on a few occasions, as well as people’s homes and yards, private spaces … I’m not complaining, it just makes me wonder if the same permission would have been given if I lacked this one piece of equipment: a camera. It’s as if there is some kind of internal drive to document and capture relics and realities, past and present.

I had free range of the entire mill for about an hour. It has 4 floors. It’s solid, but it’s old. Shooting was a bit tricky because the place is like a maze of narrow spaces and heavy machinery. The train-tracks are a stone’s throw away, and when I was on the upper levels, the building quaked as the trains passed. The dust and dirt didn’t bother me, but the trains shook me up just a little, especially on the top floor, a tiny little room accessed by a rickety ladder. I could see through the wooden slats of the floor beneath me, and I just sort of crossed my fingers when the train came by and the walls vibrated and the windows knocked around in their frames.

My favorite spot in the mill was a room downstairs, just off the main area with its machines, traces of grease, warnings, and cobwebs. I was delighted when I walked into it and discovered an empty dancehall … complete with a disco ball.