The Last Sugarcane Factory
Clouds stream through the dark sky over the sugar processing factory at Usine Ste. Madeleine. 8x10 large format, Kodak Tri-X Pan film.
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This is the first of our pictures of the world-renowned Usine Ste. Madeleine sugarcane processing factory. Constructed in the 19th century, the Ste. Madeleine factory was the largest in the world at the time. It is also one of the oldest factories worldwide in active service. While the by-products of sugarcane, led by ethanol fuel, has created a boom in exports for countries such as Brazil and Paraguay, the axe falls on our own sugar industry.
And so, yet again, our history becomes, well, history. At least the Ste. Madeleine factory remains forever as a relic in our film collection.
Looking almost as though it has grown out of the earth: the sugar factory at Usine Ste. Madeleine. 8x10 large format, Kodak Tri-X Pan film.
- October 2007
Brechin Castle - 2008
This is about as close as we can get to the remnants of the Brechin Castle sugar processing factory.
Brechin Castle smoke stacks, 2008. Rolleiflex, 250mm Zeiss Sonnar lens, Ilford Fp4 Plus film.
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Brechin Castle, 2008. Rolleiflex, 250mm Zeiss Sonnar lens, Ilford Fp4 Plus film.
Archive of the sugar mill at Usine Ste Madeleine, 2010
"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have
done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have
read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit
works ... I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valua-
tion of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among
them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library
was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia . . . when
we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are re-
corded and general principles investigated the superiority of the
Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no
exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been
collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less
valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments
used at preparatory schools in England." - Lord Macaulay, Professor of History, Cambridge University, 1834.
It is with that preface that began the indentured labour of Indian migrants in the West Indies and Trinidad. As was the norm to denigrate the cultures of enslaved populations to give credence to exploitation the Indian presence in the plains of Usine Ste Madeleine began with inhumane conditions and a wage of 25 cents a day. The conditions within the abandoned sugarcane factory at Usine Ste Madeleine may prompt some to believe that not much changed over the intervening 2 centuries.
In 2010, Trinidad Dreamscape was authorised by the government of Trinidad and Tobago and by Caroni 1975 Ltd. to archive the closed sugar mill at Usine Ste. Madeleine. We took about a month to complete the project and we used both film and digital media to record the factory. The pictures have been donated to Caroni Ltd. and to the government of Trinidad and Tobago. We present a selection of those pictures here to you.