browseEastgate Cement Works
Dave Thomas (Photographer)
From the original Side Gallery exhibition text, 1992:
Most of us probably take cement for granted. It has been around for a long time now, looks a simple material and forms an essential part of the infrastructure of modern existence. In fact, its manufacture is quite complicated, involving many stages from basic rock to finished product. It must be one of the most unsung transformations in manufacturing industry.
And yet it is an amazingly complex process that is a curious mixture of brute force and high technology. It begins high on the southern flank of Weardale, where the hard, intransigent limestone is blasted from the quarry face, transported to the crushing plant and transformed into powder before journeying down to the process rooms on the valley floor. In all of this there is an underlying feeling of an almost primordial battle between man and mineral to create the end product. Once down in the valley, the basic powder begins another series of journeys, nearly all automated, before ending up in several different storage silos ready for dispatch by road or rail. Nearly everything about the plant is on an epic scale, with machines and buildings towering over the human form.
I wanted to record on film the character of people employed in heavy industry. In a world of increasing high-tech automation, where machines and computers increasingly do our work for us, there is, I feel, a character and resolve about people who battle with the elements and work manually, that is perhaps being eroded and lost. It is an aspect of our culture and history that should be valued and cherished. Dave Thomas