Images of Industrial Heritage

Containers in a row Photo: Eleftheria Lialios

Chicago 27.8.2006

"i am working on a new body of work. industrial landscapes of decayed steel factories outside chicago. a very different body of work for me. ACME steel coke plant employed 2000 people when 10 years ago they let everyone go, families who are now living in poverty, crime is high in this area. now it is a ghost town with steel parts and machinery from the height of industrialization in the 70's. Mittal Steel from Germany bought some of their equipment, but most is still there. Attached are a couple of these images for you to look at. let me know what you think.

Note: all photos which shall follow have been taken by Eleftheria Lialios

Alone the sheer size of these plants, nowadays mostly no-man's land, stretches out in time as the industrial revolution. When there used to work at the plant 20 000 people, as Eleftheria Lialios writes, then other interests prevailed in society and regulatory principles as understood to govern this part of the economy meant power and prowness. One can hardly detect that in these images of grass and even different kinds of weeds growing everywhere these plants no longer in use.

Ghost like are these landscapes which shall never recover from the industrial intervention, but which is picked up by pop music groups calling themselves 'Heavy Metal'. The earth of these places is drunk with lead and other poisonous substances. When East and West Germany were re-united most of the former industrial plants in East Germany closed down. The environmental clean-up process was immense and often very costly. It underlines what waste and wastages industrial prowness had produced not merely as side effect, but a definite outcome it came closed to the scorched earth.

These black and white images are special. They capture the gruesome locations where power was practically steered, engineered, utilized and produced. It required heavy equipment. How these factories came ever into existence is also something short of a miracle. Along the thickness of the pipes and then the use of water in the entire process had to be included in any far reaching calculations before any conclusions could be reached that this could be done. In America that slogan 'it can be done' was often answered with such certainty that it took even the workers themselves by surprise when seeing how much could be achieved with so little. When going home their pockets remained empty. Their heads were heavy from smoke and metalsounds. The noise was at times unbearable. Throbbing industry as if the heart of society was a common metaphor in use around that time.

The heights of those towers were amazing. No angle can capture it fully. Yet in her photographic work Eleftheria Lialios shows how to deal with these industrial monsters now gone silent. Time passes by them just as rifts in society show themselves with the rich living on the one side of the track and the poor, including all those who work at the steel factory, on the other side of the track. That was depicted in Marquez's "hundred years of loneliness".

Window of the ACCM plant

...and then she reaccounts another, but similar story connected to BP and what has become a kind of censorship when taking photos of these plants:

"a few weeks back, i went to take pictures in gary, indiana where a lot of the industries are still functioning. i went out to take a picture of an advertising that said "Happy Jacks Saloon", behind it was the Amoco oil refinery, now owned by BP. it was a funny picture in its totality, as a cartoon figure was drinking a beer while an industry was polluting the environment and its people. drink and be happy for tomorrow we die. violeta and jesse were waiting in the car as i was taking this picture and a policeman came up to me and asked me what i was taking a picture of. i replied, 'the advertisement'. he then said that the amoco plant was in the background and if i was taking a picture of the advertising, then the plant had to be in the background in the picture. he then said that if Amoco catches me taking a picture of their plant, they will smash my camera, take my film and put me to jail. part of the Homeland Security measures he said. he repeating this several times, but never got into detail with it. he then said, ' you don't want to go to federal prison for taking pictures of an oil refinery, now do you?' i said okay, but can i at least take one, and he said, ' i wouldn't advise it'. he followed us as we drove out of the city after that. artists cannot take pictures of oil refineries and the landscape around them as i could possibly sell them to interested parties. censoring material that could be used for death. anyways, i am doing this work as it is important to show."

Photos and letters by Eleftheria Lialios

Text by Hatto Fischer (3.7.2010)

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