hebig.org/blog
Personal webnode of Haiko Hebig

Ted, who was working ten-hour days, six-day weeks at the B&W Tube Mill, kept his eye on the television, on a Terry Bradshaw-to-Lynn Swann pass, and said “I wouldn’t be in any hurry, Snots. This place ain’t going nowhere.”

Maybe what Ted was saying was that he wasn’t going anywhere. Because to all our surprise the place as we knew it did go somewhere. It went away.

Before that happened, in 1977, American photographer Richard Snodgrass portrayed "the mills and mill towns north of Pittsburgh, along the Ohio River and its tributary, the Beaver":

My intention was to portray the people who lived here, not by showing the people themselves, but by showing the objects on which they left their imprint. I thought of the images like stage settings after the players had exited, the lives themselves seen in afterimage. In a way it became prophetic, prescient, because in 10 years the mills were shut down and often leveled, the towns were struggling to survive, many of the people had moved away. A way of life gone, like smoke.

First, read Richard's text. It is broken up into 21 short episodes and outstanding. Only then, see his photos. Joint, it is fascinating glimpse into a former steel region.

[Thanks, Thomas!]