photographs of industrial installations include
monumental terminals; trackside maintenance
structures; power stations; suburban depots; any
number of factories, iron and steel works, and
petroleum installations; as well as loading and
unloading devices along wharves and docks.
Whether or not they appertain to the new oligo-
polies and monopolies being formed in these years,
each structure appears as a singular artifactandas
a component of a coherent engineered order. Its
own components (roof lines, smokestacks, trusses,
suspension cables, cranes, towers) read clearly so
as to be easily identified and cross-referenced.
Trains, ore boats, and other ships also loom
large, yet do not disorient the viewer as they are
pictured head-on, horizontally, or zeroing diagon-
ally into deep space.
Just as ‘‘system,’’ ‘‘efficiency,’’ and ‘‘survey’’
were the buzzwords of the new engineering theory,
‘‘consolidation’’ characterizes these dynamic indus-
trial images. The Detroit Photographic Company,
which marketed prints and postcards, consolidated
the practices and inventories of William Henry
Jackson and numerous other independent photo-
graphers. Along with the stereo views of the Key-
stone View Company, Underwood & Underwood,
and other national distributors, Detroit Photo-
graphic’s images marketed a visual archive of
urbanism as industrialized order to an industrializ-
ing public (metropolitan workers and shoppers).
They show residues of ‘‘grand style’’—clear com-
positional boundaries between the genteel observer
and the industrial zone. However, their equally
grand exploitation of the long, panoramic format,
for example, the four-part panorama of Bethlehem
Iron Company (1891), indicates linear expansion
and implies boundless diversification.
The drama of these new zones—their smoke,
steam, and thrusts—is also forcefully presented in
photography. It is indebted to paintings, prints,
illustrated stories extolling industrial escapism,
and Pictorialist photography. Stieglitz’s snapshots
of the New York Central yards, Alvin Langdon
Coburn’s smoky, artfully smoke-stacked views of
Pittsburgh steel installations, and Clarence White’s
studies of mid-western canal and eastern ship-
building zones show the visceral impact of the
spreading ‘‘hand of man.’’ Pictorialism was instru-
mental in creating a symbolic language of process,
material transformation, looming form, and caver-
nous space that Margaret Bourke-White and
others would infiltrate into the next generation.
Where industrial photography and industrial Pic-
torialism substantially differ is in the notion of the
archive itself, which implies a huge quantity, a
need for storage, mass distribution, and the sub-
mersion of the artist into the arterial tracks of
engineered and romantic commerce. Pictorialism
vaunted the single print by the singular artist.
Archival and industrial strategies and images
come together in the photographic document of
1904–1914, the construction of the Panama Canal.
Ernest Hallen, the official photographer of the U.S.
government’s Isthmian Canal Commission, made
over 10,000 negatives covering every aspect of the
project. His most advanced work positions the
observer right in front of huge concrete structures
or within the canal cut. Ulrich Keller notes that
these intersections produced not only an ‘‘awesome
body of information,’’ but also ‘‘the systematic doc-
umentation of a given industrial production process
by a specially appointed photographer who remains
on the job for months, if not years.’’ (Keller 1983,
viii) The ‘‘awesome information’’ strategy extended
into the corporate 1920s; studied, systematic com-
munication would define federally controlled pro-
jects of the 1930s.1920–1930: Incorporated Structures
By the 1920s and in the fully developed industrial
corporation, the production and distribution of
images were fully professionalized by executive
managers and engineers. A departmentalized hier-
archy of communication strategies replaced the
multiple founts of image-making of previous dec-
ades, and photography came into its own to repre-
sent them. Members of the higher executive strata
utilized this imagery to communicate with one
another horizontally, reinforcing their hard-won
status of policy-makers and gatekeepers.
Decontextualization was the mode of address,
and it was accomplished via a variety of image
types: aerial views of industrial installations as
well as urban industrial districts; perspectives of
factory interiors; close-ups of machines; and
close-up portraits of executives. These were per-
fected by photographers whose prominence was
keyed to their ability to adapt their techniques
and styles to various industrial jobs and clients.
Success was also keyed to exposure in the key
archival publications of the day. Corporate stock-
holder magazines, portfolios, and advertisements
were the basis of this exposure as publicity man-
agers generated the commissions. Re-publication in
business culture magazines (Fortune andVanity
Fair), in university textbooks (American Economic
Life), and in multi-volume pictorial histories(The
Pageant of America) further standardized and
ensured the life of these image types.INDUSTRIAL PHOTOGRAPHY