Last fall I listened to a presentation about the technical advances and long-term prospects for metalcasting, as a process and an industry — a presentation given by the always insightful Raymond Monroe, of the Steel Founders Society of America. One of his great qualities is the expansiveness of his views, and his willingness to see developments for their critical detail and their long-term implications.

He started his presentation with a slide show of metalcasting history — Chinese bronze, Mesopotamian iron, etc. So, naturally I thought of Raymond when I discovered this photo:



It shows a patternmaker preparing a mold for an artisanal casting. The novelty of this is that it is a high-quality color photo taken in about 1910 by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.  Prokudin was an official photographer to the Imperial Court of Russia. He conducted a photographic survey of the empire for the Tsar, and in doing so created an invaluable record of a lost time. Something very much like this scene  might still be viewed today in many parts of the world. Metalcasting is enduring, as Raymond Monroe explained.

The foundry where the photo was “snapped” was the Kasli Iron Works in the Ural Mountains between Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, still a center of iron and steelmaking. Kasli had been established in the 18th century, so it was already more than 150 years old at the time of the photo. It enjoyed a reputation for high-quality craftsmanship, and it is said to have employed more than 3,000 people at the time Prokudin visited there.

The image is fascinating also because it is a demonstration of the four-plate process — black, blue (cyan), magenta, yellow — used to create clear and detailed color photos and prints. (It's the same approach we take to print magazines today, by the way; for motion pictures, TV, and computer monitors, a three-color process — red, green, blue — is standard.) Prokudin traveled the length and breadth of the old Russian Empire, capturing in vibrant color its people and places, using four separate glass plates for each image. It's an extraordinary achievement and a remarkable record. You can read and view much more about him and his work at this exhibition presented by the Library of Congress.

For me, it’s a new and vivid detail in the message I heard last fall, about timeless and enduring principles at work across time and space. One bad day, or month, or year can make anyone of us despair, but our work — photography, metalcasting — is a testament to us and for all time. And, thus, a reason to be hopeful.