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After The Sugar & Before The Sphinx: The Domino Sugar Factory [Photos]

artiholics-featured-Raphaelson-sugar-factoryNew York – Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Kara Walker art installation at the old Brooklyn Domino Sugar Factory has been drawing a lot of art world (and Instagram world) attention these past few weeks. Wandering around in the massive empty shell of a building with a sugar coated sphinx and some small sculptural works, you may start to wonder what the giant warehouse looked like when its machinery was in place.

Raw sugar warehouse.

Paul Raphaelson photographed every inch of the Refinery, just before they began gutting the buildings. He was the last photographer allowed access to the site, and the only one given permission for a large-scale photo documentation project.

Bin distribution machine, bin structure.

Rusting hulks doomed to be dismembered and sold off for metal scrap, victims of the modern age.  I love photography of forgotten and abandoned architecture, monolithic industrial devices shedding crackled paint, slouching under their own weight as years of neglect and the natural environment seep in and begin to take over.  The mammoth machines in these photos are gone, and soon so will be the entire building complex.  Enjoy the final photo tour of America’s crumbling industrial past.

Flying buttresses. Raw sugar warehouse. Bucket elevator. Raw sugar warehouse. Molasses and rust. Raw sugar warehouse. Boiler house. Boiler house. Boiler house. Boiler house. Control room. Boiler house. Ground floor. Filter house. Filter tanks. Filter house. Pumps. Filter house. Steel conveyor belt for recycling bone char. Filter house. Steel conveyor belt for recycling bone char. Filter house. Centifuges. Pan house. Raphaelson-17 Vacuum pans. Pan house. Raphaelson-19 String Filter Machine. Top floor. Filter house. Raphaelson-21 Top floor. Filter house. Level gauges for blowup tanks. Filter house. Basement. Pan house. Conveyor and foot bridge, from filter house. Looking up the conveyor / foot bridge to the bin structure. From the top of the bin structure. Boiler house and syrup station, from the top of the bin structure.  Bin distribution machine, bin structure. Above the bin distribution machine. Bin structure. Bin distribution control panel, bin structure. Blower and bucket conveyor. Top of the packaging house. Raphaelson-34 From refined sugar wharf. Syrup station, boiler house, and main refinery building. From Packaging house. Office. Packaging house. Raphaelson-38 Packaging machine. Packaging house. Adant house. Adant house.Steam bridge, bridge to packaging house, bridge to bin structure.Raphaelson-43

He’s currently working on a book, in collaboration with architectural historian Matthew Postal, Pulitzer Prize-winning photography editor Stella Kramer, and several former workers from the refinery.  Until then, prints are available through his website   www.paulraphaelson.com

Photos by Paul Raphaelson

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

Written by
Cojo Art Juggernaut

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Artiholics, Art Sucks, and the soon to be launched podcast Artist In Repose, Cojo "Art Juggernaut" (Colin C. Jorgensen) is a NYC based artist, art writer, and occasional photographer.

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