Abandoned Soda Ash Plant Beneath California Mountains Photography

Pale Industrial Buildings Sit Low Against a Broad Mountain Slope

The plant looks small beneath the mountains. In California’s eastern Sierra landscape, I photographed the abandoned Pittsburgh Plate Glass soda ash operation with enough distance to include the low scrub, pale buildings, and broad slopes behind them. This color image is as much about the setting as the industrial structures: the land gives the plant its scale.

Tall cylindrical forms rise above a cluster of lower roofs, with connecting equipment making a thin outline against the mountain. Their pale surfaces separate them from the brown slopes, but the buildings never fill the frame. I found that keeping them low in the composition made their isolation more apparent than a close view would have done.

The foreground is uneven with small patches of scrub. Behind the plant, the mountain carries larger folds, darker ridges, and touches of snow near the higher ground. Clouds hang across the top of the image, softening the light and keeping the palette restrained. Those layers lead from nearby vegetation to the factory, then into a much larger landscape.

I made this photograph in 2010, recording the structures as they stood within that open space. The name belongs to the company, while the place is distinctly Californian. What holds my attention is the difference between the plant’s constructed shapes and the mountain’s irregular surfaces. One has cylinders, roofs, and narrow connections; the other spreads in broad slopes behind them. The photograph brings both into a single view without letting either lose its character.

© Dan Kosmayer, 2010