Tag / industrial heritage

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  • 105_3580.jpg

    Blower house, Völklingen Ironworks

    (ISO 100, f8 @ 24mm, 5sec., 14:57) It is impressively silent in the 6.000 squaremeters of this blower house today. Two massive machines weighing 400 tons each used to blow air into the six furnaces of the iron works while it was still producing. I asked myself what it was like to work here without hearing protection exposed to 90 db of infernal noise in three shifts around the clock.…

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    Völklingen Ironworks, view from the charging platform

    (ISO 100, f8 @ 30mm, 1/125sec., 14:21) I am standing on the charging platform here approx. 27m above the ground and we are looking towards one of the three slag heaps of the ironworks. The slag mountains are locally called “Hostenbacher Alps” and reach a height of 90 to 130m. Interestingly the heat inside these slag heaps might have contributed to the development of a great variety of lichens. Scientific…

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    Parking lot, Völklingen Ironworks

    (ISO 100, f11 @ 25mm, 1/30sec., 19:46) This was one of the first images I took after I arrived in Völklingen and the making was a bit bizarre: While I positioned my tripod some guys in their 20’ies surrounded me with their cars. They circled around me with their engines roaring. I completely ignored them and tried to compose the frame. After a while they stopped it and parked a…

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    Blast furnace, Völklingen Ironworks

    (ISO 100, f8 @ 27mm, 1/40sec., 14:13) The Völklingen ironworks, which closed on July 4th, 1986, was the first location from the heyday of heavy industrialization to become a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 1994. They are now the most significant surviving ironworks from the 19th and 20th centuries in the world. Significant both as a record of industrial progress and decline and as recognition of the ingenuity and…