[Steel Mills in Pennsylvania, for the Series "Along the Right of Way," Fortune Magazine, September 1950]
Walker Evans American
Not on view
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.
