the Dam and a Portion of the Power Plant as Seen
from the Low-Level Catwalk. Top Forms on Dam
at Elevation 1,055. October 2, 1934.’’ His structural
and mechanical engineering details have the decon-
textualization, planar gridding, and complexity of
Sheeler’s River Rouge conveyors, but heroic slo-
gans (reflecting corporate advertising campaigns)
have been replaced by information: ‘‘Detail of
Roof Slab and Beam Reinforcement in Canyon
Wall Valve-House Structure. June 1, 1935.’’ And
in his fine-art views, taken as engineering docu-
ments and then printed for display and framing in
federal offices in Washington, the controlling eye
of the executive manager has visually been replaced
by that of the machine. This is exemplified in the
monumental claw-like shapes and shadows climb-
ing up and arching over ‘‘Portion of 287.5 Kv.
Transofmers, Roof Take-off Structures for Units
N-1 to N-4 Inclusive, from Ramp at Elevation
673.0. April 12, 1938.’’ Glaha commented that
‘‘drawings of this type are often beautiful....It is
the beauty of precision, the beauty that becomes
evident when nonessentials are stripped away—in
other words, the beauty of pure function.’’ (Ben
Glaha, quoted in Vilander, 1999, 55) This was the
ultimate streamlining of the industrial project.
After 1940: Industrial Re-Mapping
The didactic functions and messages of industrial
photography were an established lexicon by the
1940s. What became apparent during and after
World War II was that the focus of American
progress had shifted: from the industrial metropolis
to the industrial district with its factories; thence to
the power plants being constructed in remote, rural
locations; and finally to the vehicles and highways
that transported materials, products, goods, and
people to all of these sites of production. One
aspect of post-World War II industrial photogra-
phy is its linkage to an emergent highway culture, a
culture of space bisected by highways, criss-crossed
by junctions, bounded by billboards, and anchored
by tourist villages that rapidly merged with nearby
towns. The ‘‘strip,’’ the ubiquitous jumble of estab-
lishments just outside so many city limits that
photography from the 1950s through the 1980s
would scrutinize, was not far behind.
The major industrial photography project of this
eminently modern era was the archive amassed by
Standard Oil of New Jersey (SONJ) under the di-
rection of Roy Stryker. Intended to bolster the
huge petroleum company’s image through the
production and dissemination of thousands of pic-
tures (SONJ was under fire because of accusations
of possible wartime collusion with the Germans),
the project amassed 85,000 photographs, thou-
sands of which were kept in circulation. Some
made their way into newspapers and magazines,
including SONJ’sThe LampandPhoto Memoand
the popular periodicalsLife, Look, andSaturday
Evening Post.Others were enlarged into the rela-
tively new form of the photo mural and sent to
cultural and educational organizations. Still others
formed the visual texts of fine art exhibitions,
includingIn and Out of Focusat the Museum of
Modern Art, New York.
What is important about this culminating indus-
trial archive is not its image styles, image types, or
even its short-lived success as propaganda, but
rather the overall scale and reach of the program
and its thorough professionalization. Whether the
subject of a pictorial sequence is an oil installation
and its high-technology machinery, such as the
series devoted to the fluid catalytic cracker in Lin-
den, New Jersey, or a SONJ-dominated locale,
such as the series on St. Martinville, Louisiana, or
three SONJ towns in Texas, the content is the
restructuring of the continental map as nodes of
industrial activity separated by huge spatial voids.
These nodes extend the notion of industry from the
workplace to the town and finally to the family
home itself. Photography makes this extended
industrial landscape ‘‘real.’’
Esther Bubley, Russell Lee, Harold Corsini,
Edwin and Louise Rosskam, Gordon Parks, Todd
Webb, John Vachon, John Collier, Jr., Berenice
Abbott, Charlotte Brooks, and Elliott Erwitt were
the SONJ photographers. They worked as freelan-
cers. Some were veterans of 1930s documentary pro-
jects and others made their first mark here. In that
they were working with a by-then fully professiona-
lized photographic language, they can be considered
the first ‘‘industrial photographers.’’ From this point
on, industrial photography would be mainstreamed
‘‘to help sell products, to influence public opinion,
and to educate and entertain employees.’’ (Zielke
and Beezley 1948, v) It comes as no surprise that
the aforementioned text, dividing industrial photo-
graphy into ‘‘pictorial,’’ ‘‘human,’’ ‘‘news,’’ and
‘‘how-to’’ interests, came out in the apex years of
SONJ-distributed imagery. Thereafter, the how-to
books proliferated, and the field plateaued.
GeraldineWojnoKieferSeealso: Abbott, Berenice; Aerial Photography;
Architectural Photography; Bauhaus; Bourke-
White, Margaret; Coburn, Alvin Langdon; Erwitt,
Elliott; Farm Security Administration; Lee, Russell;INDUSTRIAL PHOTOGRAPHY