PHOTOS BY MARTIN W. KANE
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| From
1982 to 1997, I documented the passing of the industrial era in the
Northeastern United States. During that time I worked independently
and as a staff photographer for the Hagley
Museum and Library. The projects I worked on told the story of
closing shipyards, lace mills, textile plants, oil refineries, steel
mills, coal mines, railroad operations, and almost everything else
that once made the “rust-belt” a
production powerhouse. A historian that worked closely with me once quipped
that I was the undertaker of American industry, making a memorable image
of the workplace corpse before the wrecking crew arrived. The photos for Cold Steel were made at the Bethlehem Steel Mill, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which ceased operation in March 1997. Today, much of the Bethlehem steel mill is gone, mined for the scrap metal value of its building. The Bethlehem Steel Corporation entered bankruptcy in 2002 and it disappeared as an entity in 2003. A museum may be built to preserve a small portion of the site. It
is hard to describe a facility that covers a thousand acres and has
hundreds of buildings; it is even harder to photograph it. In many of
my earlier projects I had worked to make a visual record of the place,
but in Bethlehem I was trying to catch ghosts. I was seeking the spirit
of the place, the echo of the workers that had once built and operated
the vast enterprise. Nothing can match the experience of the steel mill
in operation, or the feeling of desolation after the last worker has
left. |