ДС-158

Beside the road north stands a dead asphalt plant, blue steel, rusted silo, the type designation ДС-158 still stenciled where the paint has held, a machine introducing itself politely from the afterlife. I stopped, of course. Regular readers know that abandoned industry is my roadside religion, and this one had its name tag on.

The DS-158 mixed the roads of a whole district once; the roads outlived the plant, which is either irony or exactly the plan, depending on your economics. I walked the gravel yard with the camera, cataloguing conveyor angles and the turquoise control cabin where somebody's thermos once steamed against exactly this kind of grey sky.

I photograph these plants the way other travelers photograph churches, and the comparison is not flippant: infrastructure is the region's confession of what it believed in. This one believed in roads. I drove on, on its product, which felt like the correct salute.