New work, for free.
> New electronic photobook from Asheville photographer Max Cooper
> 74 images of the iconic Enka Clocktower and its grounds
> Century-old clocktower is the last remnant of industry once vital to Enka’s livelihood
> Available FOR FREE to the Enka/Asheville community Sept. 9 - 12, 2023, and to patrons in perpetuity
> Receive your copy by signing up with the above form or by becoming a patron
In the tiny community of Enka, a clocktower has loomed for almost a hundred years. Once a monument to American industry, it’s now a monument to something else. Here on the outskirts of Asheville, NC, known for its food and beer and eclectic tourist draws, this obelisk marked time in the center of a rough, thundering, red-brick industrial complex. At the edge of a vacation town, the bone of labor--now picked bare--stabs at the sky.
The American Enka plant, like the neighboring paper mill in Canton, is gone. Where it stood, an open plain stretches, leveled by successive volleys of failed re-development. The property changes hands, roads are built, bridges span the creek -- but new purpose has never taken root. Developers threaten to bring the tower down, only to be met with ardent protest from Enkans who lived and worked in its shadow.
But nature abhors a vacuum: Bucks stalk the empty land, raising their antlers in the rut; hawks swoop on field mice; coyotes chase rabbits into ditches; human beings nest under the trestle that once carried rail cars to the plant. And we all leave our tracks.
“The Enka Clocktower and the Things I’ve Seen in its Shadow” is a new collection of images from Asheville photographer Max Cooper. Containing 74 photos taken over a span of six years, this free e-book documents the clocktower and its grounds in anticipation of inevitable development. And it raises questions about the monuments we raise, the woods we cut down, the labor we exert, and what it is we’re really working toward.
