[Steel Mills in Pennsylvania, for the Series "Along the Right of Way," Fortune Magazine, September 1950]
Evans made this dynamic study of mill roofs, smokestacks, and electric lines while he was special photographic editor at Fortune magazine. At Fortune, Evans conceived of photographic portfolios, took the photographs for them, designed the page layouts, and wrote the accompanying texts. A spy's view of America's industrial corridor from the vantage point of an elevated railway, this image is a study of raw power in shades of steel gray, recalling Charles Sheeler's images of industrial subjects twenty years earlier. Evans's camera races past the scene, however, inflecting his view with a knowing skepticism that was wholly lacking in Sheeler's pre-Depression era celebration of technological promise.
Artwork Details
- Title: [Steel Mills in Pennsylvania, for the Series "Along the Right of Way," Fortune Magazine, September 1950]
- Artist: Walker Evans (American, St. Louis, Missouri 1903–1975 New Haven, Connecticut)
- Date: 1950
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 6 3/8 × 9 5/8 in. (16.2 × 24.4 cm)
Sheet: 8 1/4 in. × 11 in. (20.9 × 27.9 cm) - Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, and Frish Brandt Gift, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.250
- Rights and Reproduction: © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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