(The introduction was written in 2008. The shooting slowed after 2011, but did continue and is ongoing. Since then the mills in Warren, Mingo juction, Steubenville, Weirton and Ashland have ceased and their blast furnaces demolished. More years of work will eventually be added to this existing book.)
Steel. Photography. What more needs to be said?
I had to ask the question out of respect for iconic things that possess enough visual impact to make text expendable. Steel mills, both still and functional, have enough visual presence, to skip the introduction.
Besides who has the patience these days to read what I have to say about the pictured mills that appear in STEEL? Unless played as a game, hasn’t specificity been downgraded in the business of representation where, I’m told, many say, photography has no unique relation to reality, let alone truth. But what difference does it make what is said? Beyond knowing indubitably your subject, being connected works well on a method level. It’s how I tighten up the work creating my timing and knows when to shoot ñ the predictive moment if you will. That moment is not when the shot is taken, but when, in the future you return to find no physical evidence of its existence.
But to get there it’s best to be acquainted. I look at these pictures, which are very recent, and, refereeing operational mills over those closed, I’m still surprised by the number of mills that, during this documentation, died, came back to life, only to die once more.
Know thy subject, go to the source, be selfless in pursuit of the soon to be lost or changed. You could call it chasing a history, where wishful thinking is nowhere to be found. And thankfully not all shots in STEEL are the last taken of the subject.
Steel is a compelling subject to depict, particularly during periods of change for the industry like the early 1900s (American dominance) or the birth of the Rust Belt (1978-1984). In 2001 unprecedented events began to once more transform the American steel industry but in ways never seen before. There was both expansion and contraction with busts not seen since the birth of the Rust Belt, and a boom not seen since the consolidation of steel in the early 1900s or the post war years. The years between 2002 and 2012 have been a tale of steel going in two opposite directions simultaneously.
I started shooting steel and other industries in 1978 during the beginning of their long fall. In 2002 the steel documentation intensified in response to the industry being brought again to the brink of collapse as fifty steel companies are forced into bankruptcy, including some of America’s most historic. I made my move and got deeper into the chronicle, then suddenly, by late 2003, many of the mills were actually saved, and all of these at the very last minute. In fact American steel returned healthier than ever with a new worth as well as a notably different profile. It was a pretty stunning comeback as the mills lit up once more when most feared they wouldn’t. Simultaneously this rise was tempered by tough closings of old-line steel firms, some of which had the most modern and high tech equipment in the world. I was fortunate, in the sense that, faced with end of something, a picture is realistically the only thing left to be made.
The result is STEEL, which is a VIEW on many of the large integrated steel mills in America during a time that should be remembered as the final globalization of American steel.
Integrated mills make steel the old-fashioned way, from the earth with taconite (iron ore), coke (coal) and limestone melted in furnaces. Their “hot ends” define them. That would be the coke plant, blast furnace and basic oxygen furnace combination that can make steel from the scratch of the earth. The hot ends are gaseous, hot, dangerous, dirty, loud, and smelly, like other parts of the mill only more so, and, through the work of photographers like the Bechers, Plowden, Evans and Bourke-White, these mills have become the central symbols of 20th century industry as evolving perceptions of industry are cast in each of these works. And, for me, it is the steel work of Finster, Uwe, Schultz and Macha that are the clearest and steadiest.
Today the big mills are more than the sublime examples of the machine-age. They are rare. Always endangered is the aura now cast by the blast furnace in Europe and America. The future is elsewhere is the judgment received since the birth of the Rust Belt.
Northern Indiana has the most followed by Ohio with seven blast furnaces in operation. By 2002 just 30 of them were left in the United States. In 2012 seven more furnaces are falling, with three more, including the giant “L” furnace at Sparrow’s Point, in hospice. Pennsylvania has only two operational blast furnaces, just outside Pittsburgh at US Steel’s Edgar Thompson Works. Forty years ago, U.S. Steel alone had 20 blast furnaces in Pennsylvania, and more than 200 were operating across the country.
People outside the Belt of Rust or newcomers to industry might think American steel is already dead, but they’re just plain wrong. In fact, the price of steel and its consumption is going up, not down. The country is actually producing 50% more steel than it did two decades ago while its market value increased nearly fivefold. America still makes a lot of steel, (third biggest producer), and it still consumes a lot of steel, (second largest consumer). The U.S. both makes and uses about 100 million tons per year making it a mature but still viable industry.
Management no longer, relatively speaking, sees labor as a drawback. Labor contracts were amended in the Great Shake-Up after 2001 ñ thirty job classifications reduced to five etc. Costs were driven way down as mills also updated. Now, across the nation’s steel industry, 120,000 employees produce 100 million tons of steel. In 1970 it took 500,000 workers to make 91 million tons (peak employment was 650,000 in 1953). Efficiency gains have reduced the number of U.S. steelworkers 70% in 25 years and the trend continues. Essentially today’s mills make the same amount of steel they made in 1990 but with one-third the workers who operate a total of thirty furnaces. It took ninety furnaces in 1990 to make the same amount of steel. Steelworkers can be unselfish hard-working partners with management in these desperate days.
Huge investments in new technologies, facilities, employee training, and product development along with the lean workforce have reduced the number of man-hours required to produce a ton of steel from 10 to 3.2 in just 15 wrenching years. Today’s production processes are technologically sophisticated, requiring more highly developed skills and workers with better training and education. American workers are some of the most efficient in the world and leaders in making the most sophisticated high-tech grades of steel.
But being a part of the global market meant domestic steel needed to get even leaner to survive. Even when the industry transformed itself during a 20-year period of bloodletting efficiencies and retooling, in market terms, its overcapacity as the former world leader still cursed it.
By the time of our 2001 recession a glut of very cheap steel now produced all over the world, forced fifty American steel companies into bankruptcy including LTV and Bethlehem, which accounted for 40% of all steel production. A quiet never told but dramatic transformation for domestic steel producers began as many simply shutdown while the remainder kept an eye open for consolidation and government intervention. Waking up to the situation Bush, in spite of all his free trade faith, made an unprecedented and quick left turn by installing tariffs on imports, buying time for American producers to gut and consolidate, thereby saving quality mills that were among the top plants in the world. A nation involved in two outright wars, that promised to be the happiness police for global capitalism, didn’t really want to lose the (strategic) domestic metals industry.
After the jolt of this 2001 downturn steel reorganized itself drastically. Production no longer continues in an unprofitable market. Now, with the complete cooperation of the unions, if things are bad enough, they idle the furnaces until conditions improve. Most importantly the power of consolidation allows them to call more shots in the market by manipulating production and pricing in unison.
Lastly and most fortunately for American steel, all of this occurred in the steepest rise in commodity prices that anyone remembers. In less than three years a ton of steel went from $240/ton to as much as $1500/ton, making old steel a darling for investors.
Steel bit the bullet and through massive shifts in ownership, as well as a lot of outright gutting, not seen since the sensational birth of the Rust Belt, it survived. In fact, it flourished in a wave generated by both planned success and fortunate coincidences, namely the unprecedented spike in commodities that went with wild demand but recently ended.
Today companies from overseas account for half of the domestic production of steel. Arcelor Mittal, an Indian steel firm and the world’s largest, is the second biggest domestic producer, Severstal, a Russian company, became #4 when it bought old Henry Ford’s furnaces on the Rouge, as well as, probably, the miracle survivor of the Rust Belt, Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel, plus two more large integrated mills, WCI, and Sparrow’s Point, the only east coast integrated mill in the country (although these last three mills would fail by 2012).
There’s plenty of steel action always going on down south. Though not integrated mills, a German producer, Thyssen, is building the newest American mill in always steel-friendly Alabama, and right now, Severstal has done the same in Mississippi, and the ever productive American company, Nucor, with mills all over the south, is booming. These mills do not make steel from scratch but from scrap, thus they are not integrated mills in the true sense, but they make great steel.
Now if you think that steel can’t make money in this country, look at 108-year-old US Steel. It’s had its most profitable years ever recently. Look at AK Steel, a smaller independent company in Ohio. It was the fourth highest percentage gainer on the NASDAQ in 2006, while steel-maker Allegheny Technologies was number one, far surpassing even the tech stocks’ run-up during their heyday and making steel, of all things, hugely attractive for investors.
Steel and its workers have, over a thirty-year period, willfully fell on the sword of efficiency, the way other big industries and government workers are now asked to do after our latest recession, 2009. In this way steel is the ultimate industrial survivor and provides a key lesson for American industry in general, particularly the auto manufacturers. And it ain’t pretty, this matter of industrial survival.
Although going back to 1994 and continuing through the present, many of the shots in STEEL were made during the strange transformative period of 2002 to 2006 that’s been such a mix of more rust belt demise, industry boom and constantly changing owners. After this introduction and before the main body of pictures there is also a brief look at some of these mills 32 years ago.
Along with a whole new crop of dead blast furnaces from the 2001 fallout, the big integrated mills also had closed hot ends going back to 1978 that still sat rusting on their property amidst a largely active mill. The sky-high commodity market now made it profitable to tear these older or recently closed sections down and then feed them as scrap back into the same mill’s furnaces to make more steel. This suddenly profitable if cannibalistic practice took out many furnaces and structures that were stunning examples of American machine-age equipment dating back to the late 1800s up to the1950s.
I’ve been taking pictures of steel mills solidly for a while, so I know how fortunate and fateful it’s been to capture this equipment performing ñ sometimes during its last day of operation. (And If I didn’t catch a furnace operational chances are it exists further back in my archive). Although the priority is to show a mill operational, the documentation of closed, abandoned or scuttled mills was practiced by default to remember their faltering tenure.
Along these lines, after this text, you’ll see some of the lost mills in operation thirty years ago, including Republic and Interlake Steel, which later became LTV and Acme Steel. In Chicago the Calumet River was once lined with integrated mills in continuous operation since the mid 1800s. U. S. Steel, Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Illinois Steel and Wisconsin Steel are some of the names that are no longer associated with the Calumet, and in STEEL you’ll see the last days of the last two mills on that river, Acme Steel and LTV Steel.
Chicago’s Acme Steel embodies the blow of the 2001 recession for American mills that did everything right. The mill had been functioning for over one hundred years and by the 1990s was lean and efficient with the best technology including the world’s newest and most sophisticated basic oxygen furnace (where iron becomes steel) and caster (which forms the steel into workable slabs), but, like LTV, once the combination of global glut and Recession brought the price of steel down below $240/ton, it could not compete and had to close. It’s blast furnaces and coke plant are gone but not through any fault of management, labor or technology. In one of the closest calls, the BOF and caster were saved. Bush’s steel tariffs bought time for ISG to buy it at a bargain, then flip it to Arcelor Mittal for a fine hedge fund profit.
By the way, if this is not clear, I am proving that, when the beleaguered but vital steel industry does everything perfectly, and still goes under, it means we lost our way, not just in manufacturing.
Next to the Acme furnaces is the site of the now demolished LTV Coke plant ñ a coking facility that was only twenty years old and was the most modern and efficient in the industry when it permanently closed in 2001. That LTV facility and coal dock were originally a part of Republic Steel’s integrated mill, which was shut in 1983, this site was also known worldwide, at least for a time, as the site of the Chicago Massacre. (not the Richard Speck debacle)
From the Calumet River and the old Republic/LTV site you’ll see the coal dock, ore bridges and the renowned Huletts, giant ore handling machines that at one time dotted the Great Lakes and their river ports, and by now have been entirely wiped out ñ except for the last two which still stood here on the Calumet until 2010. The Huletts are also featured in the introduction in full operation in 1981.
To give you an idea how fast things can change, I shot the closed Acme and LTV Steel along the Calumet in September 2003. Both closed mills were frozen in time because of the effects of the recession of 2001. I gained access to Acme through the LTV’s huge scrap yard filled with massive pieces of scrap steel in every imaginable shape ñ beams, sheets, tank shells etc. Idle cranes and cutting gear stood over this mass of scrap iron and steel. Even back in the old wire mill there were piles of sorted scrap everywhere, heaps of car engine blocks, wire and rebar. Filled to the gills, with no market, all signs pointed, abandon in place.
Thinking I had control, I decided to do the bulk of the shooting in the winter (no mosquitoes, easier trespass, snow, more darkness, more night for day). I returned three months later and Acme was well into full demolition, no doubt to be fed into an electric furnace or BOF to produce more steel. Demolitions like this cost nothing as the scrap makes it profitable. The massive scrap yard on LTV land I had crossed three months ago was now picked clean, and the mill itself would be next. That’s how I knew a turnaround was about to blow and with this information I got busy.
The price of steel had gone through the roof and people were back booking their bets. I prepared for a turnaround of my own, and so it was time to shoot some the mills coming back on line, as well as, the rest.
In 2004 I ventured back to Detroit whose steel mills continue their long run even during, and despite of the Detroit ruins picture frenzy. Today six blast furnaces in two large integrated mills, one of which, the Rouge, sold to Severstal in 2004, and was Henry Ford’s creation. The Rouge is running fine today. The union actually chose Severstal over U. S. Steel who even offered more money. This time the union was right and Severstal has pumped one and a half billion dollars into the Rouge as their flagship United States mill. By the way, technically, the Rouge is in Dearborn, Michigan.
Here in Dearborn is America’s newest blast furnace, the first built since 1980. Blast Furnace “B” completely replaced its older Henry Ford original, which was so busy that it blew up in 2007 and had to be demolished. The furnaces Mr. Ford built were named for himself and his two sons, Benson Ford and William Clay Ford and two still stand and work, it’s the Benson that has been replaced by the new “B”. The only thing gone is the coke plant – too smelly a proposition these days in a city, but you’ll see the old Ford Coke Plant’s giant gas holders along the Rouge River, just prior to their demolition.
Yet there is still a very active coke plant downriver from the Rouge, just a part of the huge Zug Island steel mill complex purchased in 2004 by U.S. Steel in the dissolution of National Steel. It’s in Detroit’s old Hungarian Delray neighborhood, which is one of the typically devastated sections of the city. I can’t help but think, though, so few live here for so long because, for over 100 years it’s always been one of the filthiest places in America. Its concentration of industries and ship corridors remain vital. This is the heavy industry section of Detroit, the city that is only depicted as dead. People, with the exception of the very poor, outlaws and folks, who are very individual, will never live that close to noxious industry again. Nor will noxious industries be brought in to established residential neighborhoods. That’s what places like Zug Island are for, and that’s also why it’s the location of the new bridge linking Detroit and Canada. Much of Delray’s remaining churches, stores and homes will be wiped out for the bridge. Like I said, it’s zoned for heavy industry, and maybe an old Hungarian bar like Novak’s on Jefferson Ave.
Not much action from the ruins crowd in the McClouth Steel Works south of Detroit, which sat, abandoned since 1996. The McClouth furnaces were imploded in April 2004. I missed that one because I blew out a knee while shooting AK Steel in Ashland Kentucky in January 2004. McClouth’s destruction and lack of documentation make any available pictures worthwhile. Attendant to that loss and speaking on a health level, missing shots increases pain, getting shots decreases pain. I still wonder, do final shots or only shots of historic structures have value-added?
Ashland Kentucky is one of the four remaining steel mill towns along the Ohio. Here AK Steel has a fully integrated mill, although its coke plant was recently demolished. The other Ohio River mills, Wheeling Pitt Steel in Mingo Junction and Steubenville Ohio and Weirton Steel in Weirton WV. (not to mention the Follansbee WV Coke Plant part of Wheeling Pitt), lie next to each other in a knot of the old brutal industry in the Ohio River Valley. In the steel towns of Weirton, Steubenville and Mingo Junction it’s still possible to have the rare experience of a true mill town in an industrial valley where very little has changed since the seventies ñ at least until 2008 with the arrival of the Big Recession.
But before that, these old mills could make money as steel prices peaked at all time highs after 2003, while permitting more pictures to be gathered of historic mills in operation right up to (and after) their end. We see Wheeling Pitt’s #1 furnace, which was built in 1898 when it was the LaBelle Iron Works and fully operational until May 2005 as America’s oldest standing and longest running (by far) furnace. The last time these blast furnaces were called modern was 100 years ago. They and the little bit younger Carrie Furnaces are last surviving examples of a type furnace that came in with 20th century. Closed and on schedule for eventual demolition, the Steubenville furnaces are the last remnants of that city’s hot end. They stand because the present owner, RG Steel, is in bankruptcy, and the remediation of furnaces and stoves is expensive. But the furnaces will go, especially since the scrap firm, Herman Strauss bought the 100-acre Steubenville mill for 4.3 million dollars n July 2012. #1 Furnace is seen in operation and after, when snow and ice gathered on the furnaces, which is not good.
Accordingly Wheeling Pitt is a great example of the fluidity of contemporary steel. In 2007 Esmark bought it, in a one-of-a-kind reverse hostile takeover. The union contract gave the workers the last word on ownership, and their logical sentiment, was to approve the American company, Esmark, who had big plans for the mill. Then in 2008 Severstal won Esmark in a bidding war with Essa Steel of India at the record height of the American steel market. The union this time went with Severstal who had a tremendous success in Detroit. Although you can’t fault Severstal for wanting to dominate the American steel industry and upgrade their new purchase of three giant old integrated mills ñ Wheeling Pitt, WCI and Sparrow’s Point ñ they overpaid at the worst possible time. The Big Recession hit and all their mills on the Ohio were shut.
Four years later, in 2012, RG Steel (part of an American holding company Renco, which used to own WCI Steel in Warren in the first place, and were forced to sell it to Severstal in 2006) bought all of Severstal’s three integrated mills including Warren, Mingo Junction and Steubenville. Shortly thereafter RG Steel went into bankruptcy, and all of its mills went up or sale. At best, any new owners will come in and prune equipment, run anything that’s makes money if that’s possible, and sell the rest as scrap. Just like in 2003, when overcapacity was dealt with swiftly. The banks and RG Steel already had their drop dead date of August 2012 on all these big mills. And today they are dead.
Perennially idled Mingo Wheeling Pit has a new state of the art electric furnace, one of the few advanced furnaces that can utilize both blast furnace iron and/or scrap, but its remaining iron producing blast furnace #5 is an antique. This and its sister furnaces, #3 and #4 all appear in this book both active and, later on, closed. Only #5 stands today, it’s closed, small and old, but operational if need be, but that’s doubtful.
The biggest reason why Wheeling Pitt came out of its second bankruptcy in 2004 was its G-loaned investment in this electric furnace. No matter how much planning, pruning and wisdom is applied to integrated steel survival, only the really strong survive, and maybe the lucky.
You gotta hand it to Wheeling Pitt though; their first bankruptcy occurred in 1985, eventually emerging in 1991 debt-free, they would return to bankruptcy in 2000. Sandwiched between these years they had the longest steel manufacturing strike in American history, 15 months in 1996 and 1997.
RG Steel, the new owners of both the Mingo and Steubenville plants of the old Wheeling Pitt, sold/unloaded the mills in July 2012. Steubenville went for 4.3 million to a scrap company and Mingo sold for 20 million. It’s electric arc furnace alone cost 300 million to build in 2005. Severstal had bought at the height of the market, and lost this one, but there is a still an operating coke plant across the river in Folansbee. Has there been a steel mill and its work force on the edge for this long? This then, may finally be the end, seemingly. Mingo Junction still stands idle, one furnace and a state of the art electric furnace still intact, but almost all, of Steubenville North is gone, its two blast furnaces imploded in August, 2013.
Across the river in Weirton, (with Steubenville, the two miracle survivors of the Rust Belt) the mill’s hot end, its four furnaces including its famed “Christie” furnace (naming furnaces after women is a common practice particularly in river towns) were all shot up to their last day of operation as well. You’ll see the entire hot end including, what turned out to be the final blow down of the four furnaces.
The evening of the furnaces’ blown down to full idle, I went to the Columbia Club which sits no more than 150 feet from Blast Furnace #4 (Christie). While the blow down of the furnaces could be heard, I sat at the bar with two men who worked the furnace and one who worked for the mill-owned railroad, and talked with them about their work and life inside Weirton. I also expressed to them how I thought they would never restart their furnace, and, that, at best; they’d bring in cheaper slabs from Cleveland to keep the BOF fed, while eliminating any need for a basic steel industry in Weirton and the four furnaces across the street.
The four furnaces never restarted, the BOF was shut down in 2005. Their demolition started in June 2012.
Ever since the birth of the Rust Belt no one ever expected these towns and their mills to survive. Yet they do, even with most of their hot ends shut from the deathblow of the Great Recession. Likewise back then no one ever thought that a company from India would own Weirton, remembering it was an employee-owned mill. Likewise, until recently, there would be astonishment that a Russian firm would own the Steubenville and Mingo plants of Wheeling Pitt, until global economics came to the towns of the Ohio River Valley.
But, of course, things change faster than ever in the Awesome Age of Reinvention. There are no buyers for any RG mill. That drop-dead date of August 2012 has been agreed upon with the creditors. Even though there is still tons of modern steel making equipment in these old plants, no buyer, no mill.
After purchasing Weirton Steel in 2004 from ISG, Arcelor Mittal slowly began the demolition of the oldest and most unused sections of the mill like the old open-hearth furnaces, which it could easily feed into its BOF. The BOF closed in 2005. In June 2012 the demolition of the entire hot end began, and, by 2013, all that will remain of Weirton Steel is the state of the art tin mill, which still operates beautifully. Although no longer an employee-owned, stand alone, integrated, powerhouse mill; there still is a Weirton steel mill here whose final product is tin.
Industrial genealogy is a great aid to the gut. With instincts and timing allied, often you can get in at the end, shooting it operational or otherwise. A connection on diverse levels, all original, is needed to get the timing down, and, then, as always, the core work begins by going to the source, entering and doing the work.
With such knowledge you could also raise funds to shoot STEEL, by trading steel stocks.
There’s Bethlehem Steel in Bethlehem Pa. Closed finally in 1995, this former flagship mill of the venerable Bethlehem Company was bought cheaply by a hedge fund, which, in succession, waited for the market to turn, then flipped the same mills to foreign buyers for four times the getting price.
But who would now save Bethlehem’s signature blast furnace alley where five massive blast furnaces form a continuous line of 20th century brute industry that also formed the background for Walker Evans’ iconic A Graveyard and Steel Mill. I tried to save them with my camera as many did. My contribution was going in repeatedly during full moon nights to take one-hour exposures of the furnaces and light them night-for-day maybe to emphasize a time theme already inbred in the structures themselves. And certainly snow on furnaces is not a good sign. And as far as a graveyard is concerned, I shot mine from the top of the electric shop along blast furnace alley, looking at the graveyard and neighborhood from deep inside the mill.
Who would have thought, prior to the Age of Ignominious Reinvention, that the five blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel’s home mill, closed in 1995, would be “preserved” as a casino/shopping/condo complex complete with legalized slots? The venerable old-line steel company completely disappeared after its 2002 bankruptcy, its assets divided up amongst bidders including, in this case, shopping mall and casino developers in whose laps the legacy of 150 years of steel making has fallen. I guess it’s odd and obvious; making has been replaced by gaming here. Essentially an exchange for goods has given way to wishing for cash. Maybe the metaphor should be extended to the financial bets at the heart of the steel industry itself.
Coincidentally, the loosening of the gambling laws in Weirton has prevented Main Street from deteriorating like Steubenville across the Ohio River. In Weirton, numerous small casinos, instead of molten metal, light up the night sky and Main Street. And, since steel regions are so depressed, they are often given first dibs on legalized gambling to fill the economic gap.
STEEL also features historic remnants from the early era of industrial cleansing (1978-1984). These broken monuments were left standing for up to 30 years, due to the expense of cleaning up their toxins plus demo. The famed “Jenny” furnace of Youngstown Sheet & Tube was closed in 1978 but stood until 1997 when I got a chance to, at least, put it on some film during its last days. Likewise whole to partial remnants of the hot ends at Sharon Steel (now gone) and US Steel’s Duquesne Works (now gone) as well as the famed Carrie Furnaces of the old Homestead Works of U.S. Steel (planned preservation) were fully documented.
Some sites within hot ends, particularly the coke plants, continued operations well after their mills were torn down. In Lackawanna NY, Bethlehem built the world’s largest integrated mill of its time, which closed in 1983 and was eventually torn down, except its powerhouse and coke plant which worked right up until the recession of 2001 and Bethlehem Steel’s dissolution. It’s fully demolished today and a new wind farm sits on toxic sections of the property.
The same story at New Boston Coke, which was part of the old long gone Detroit Steel Works near Portsmouth Ohio, it finally fell in 2003.
Coke plants within city limits are rare today. Zug Island in Detroit, Wheeling Pitt’s old coke plant in Follansbee WV across from Steubenville is exceptions. By 2001 places like Cleveland, Weirton or Chicago had stopped producing coke within their city’s limits entirely for the first time in well over 125 years, it’s that dirty by today’s standards.
Like the coal fired power plants, the remote Ohio River valley, surrounded by coalfields, makes a good location for the most advanced coking plant in America. Sun Coke’s Haverhill Plant sits surrounded by farmland just down the road from the old New Boston Coke Works. It’s highly advanced, and what pollution the high tech coke plant spews, does so, distant from the city. It’s also building a new coke plant for AK Steel Middletown whose large furnace is seen in this book.
You will also see the mills of Cleveland and Warren, Ohio and East Chicago, Indiana.
At the end of the book (the mills run alphabetically), you’ll find Youngstown Sheet & Tubes Brier Hill Works. Just north is actually the last working section of that complex of mills that stretched for many miles along the Mahoning River, through four separate towns. This remaining pipe mill is completing a billion dollar expansion because it is in the middle of the shale boom. President Obama visited this mill as a prime example of U. S. manufacturing on the rise, which it is. It’s also French owned and non-union.
It’s a pretty good story, though. reminiscent of local mills 150 years ago feeding the demand for American rail or Bethlehem, inventor of the “H” beam, shipping its products 75 miles away to build the skyscrapers of New York. The fracking boom itself instructs us on how the steel mills first established themselves in cities and were welcomed, ignoring the pollution or other negative aspects. The big money, we see today in fracking is a lesson on industrialization. Particularly in places that have known only long hard times, especially when the benefits are equitable and large, to enough people, industry is welcomed.
Lastly, and very importantly, you’ll see some of the homes, neighborhoods and towns, so close, as to be part of the mills themselves.
The Rust Belt convinced us that the country needed to leave the age of iron and steel and maybe all manufacturing. We’re constantly reminded of the new economy’s global and technical new order but I’m not convinced. Turn away from the screen and look out your window and see wires, cars, trucks, airplanes concrete, glass and steel. And still we’re loaded with infrastructure so outmoded it cannot support what technology can now deliver.
Initiatives in energy such as windmills, batteries, lighting still require manufacturing as do our “smart wars” which still require (even more) metals. The separation of old and new economies might make the informed look smart but in fact industry has always been technology. Computers and mills work hand-in-hand for a long time now as does anything to help drive costs down. I see it as single evolution. But in current jargon, steel has managed to combine the “the best of the two economies” and succeed. (Along with everyone else including photographers.)
Our leaders just got done searching our history for a way to save the auto industry and the economy in general. Look at steel, an industry that didn’t ask for a handout or looked for the way out of this country. Steel created a way back on its own, not through so-called reinvention (turning a blast furnace into an entertainment venue) but with some brute necessities mixed with sensible decisions plus luck that finally went their way. And in STEEL today, luck may be the most important dimension.
STEEL was never pretty, and neither its survival.
Steel industry photography is an enduring thread in the world of images. Steel works well with film by offering a peerless vision of industry that is, thankfully, a challenge to capture. I call it the Grand Canyon Effect. Things with innate grandeur aren’t necessarily easy to depict, and these big things attract many photographers who make an abundance of images. Ruins can also attract photographers like flies to dead meat. I’ve heard that photography can make the banal look interesting. Of course, the interesting things already are. I think respect goes a long way in realizing good steel mill photography.
No matter the subject, access is what you must have first and steel mills are notorious for both lack of access and tons of security. Your next priority is safety. The rest is instincts, labor and just plain soldiering especially in a dark cold trespass. My mission is to work hard and capture the best depiction I can conjure. It’s been labor with no reward beyond the historical image. It’s what I know even to the extent that, when I’m, finished “out in the field”, it’s also the place I go back to. The work is existential…
Steel. Photography. Both rely on risk, labor, equipment and the experience to operate it in order to produce quality products.
The steel mill and the camera are contemporaries of the mid 1800s. That’s fatefully coincidental. From the machine-age came an invention to document its eventual demise.
There’s an aura of fate and urgency that began in the early Rust Belt years, that these pictures do not shake, but there is also the timbre of unconditional belief in the meaning of something that is still made by mind, hand and machine. How could a photographer feel otherwise?