Matt Temple

I take great pleasure in exploring antique industrial products, the creations of engineers and mechanics. I have a collection which includes strange office machines, odd pencil sharpeners, and antique typewriters. And at one point in my life, I owned a 1941 Railway Express truck. All of those things embody the care and skills of the people who created them, even though they are now rusty and worn.

These objects inform much of my photography. The rust, wear, and texture are beautiful to me. They exude the pride of their creation, and they are redolent with the impact of years of use and exposure to weather. If I see a rusty truck, I want to capture it, how the levers and the seats have aged from decades of use. I want my lens close to those parts, to capture the mechanical action, the flaking paint, and the discoloration.

This particular image also embodies something that captivated me when I was a child playing with Erector Sets and how force can be redirected. This set of miter gears shows the intersection of those two directions.