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The Colonel Ward Pumping Station was constructed to provide water supply to the city of Buffalo, pumped from Lake Erie along a 6,600 foot tunnel. On its completion in 1915, it was the largest pumping plant in the USA. It houses five immense vertical steam-driven pumps, each weighing 1,100 tons, standing 60 feet tall, and producing 1,200 horsepower. Each pump is capable of discharging 30 million gallons per day (mgd) through 48-inch diameter pipes. Higher capacity (50 mgd) electric pumps supplanted these steam pumps in 1938, but the steam pumps were retained in full working order through to 1975 as a back-up system. This is truly an awe-inspiring example of civic works and engineering from the beginning of the 20th century – and an exciting subject for documentary photography.

About author:

Born and raised in England, but living in California since the late 1980’s, my photographic skills are self-taught through decades of patience and practice. Black and white photography has always been my first love -- the simplicity, elegance, drama, timeliness and richness that it can bring to an image for me drives a more visceral response. I’m excited by the emotional ‘punch’ that black and white images bring in this particular context – the contrasts between light and dark, areas of luminance and tonality, and the abstractions of shapes and forms -- that “special” quality that heightens the emotion and impact of the image.

I’m energized in exploring images of what I see around me, especially architecture and landscape (the interest in architecture comes from the rest of my family -- my father, brother and son are all architects). I’m fascinated by the form and function of buildings that men and women create and equally by the infinite forms that nature creates and by the impacts that mankind has on shaping those forms.

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