Sitting atop a piece of land jutting into Seattle's Lake Union stands the remains of an Edwardian gasification plant, in operation for roughly the first half of the twentieth century. Today, as the centerpiece of Gas Works Park, it is part of the National Register of Historic Places, and the final destination of the hundreds of naked revelers that lead the annual Solstice parade. As such, Gas Works stands as one of the few parks in the United States where, once a year at least, one can stroll around in broad daylight as naked as the day you were born.
But beyond the pleasures of simple nudism or even public exhibitionism, the experience of stripping naked in front of these ancient, rusting monoliths brings to mind fantasies of steampunk eroticism. Might a parallel world offer a Victorian factory of naked slaves? Is our naked wanderer the last survivor of a pandemic that brought technology to its knees while conveniently also eradicating textiles? Has a technological singularity created a mechanical intelligence that uses total nudity to keep its human subjects in line? Or is it merely the familiar dream — or nightmare — of find yourself at your job completely naked?
Let these and other fantasies fill your mind as you enjoy photographer Andrew Adam Caldwell's 2014 photo essay that we call Dream Factory, now showing in the Nakedism gallery of undraped art.
