Figure 1 – Lewis Hine, 1932, Worker on the Empire State Building. Created for the US Government WPA and in the public domain.
About a year ago, I posted about what I called “Morphin’ memes.” This is the concept that the meaning or connotation of a photograph or the subject of a photograph can change with time. I took a set of photographs a triptych in 1968 of the Consolidated Edison Steam Power Plant on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and commented how it signified pollution but that five to twenty years earlier the same photographs would have symbolized power, strength, and national growth. I started my last three blogs talking about the Empire State Building. What could be more symbolic than that? But in doing my research for those blogs, I noted something that struck me as pretty peculiar.
Consider Figure 1. It was taken by Lewis Hines for the WPA. It shows a construction worker building the Empire State Building. It was after all built by men, tightening one bolt at a time, welding one joint at a time. It is pretty typical of the images of great construction projects at the time. Take a look at this set of images of the Empire State Building construction. And you have, of course, also to look at this very iconic image by Charles C. Ebbets from 1932 showing workers having lunch on a beam during construction of the RCA Building. The theme is men building and men creating. Usually, this is set against the background of great height, but often enough the background is cloudy and overcast. The men are the central theme.
Now consider images of today’s great construction projects. They are typified by images such as those that I discussed in a previous blog about the construction of NYC’s Second Avenue Subway. If you do a Google image search of the terms “Construction, World Trade Center,” you’ll see what I am talking about. And so as not to belabor(sic) the point there are notable exceptions, one of my favorites being an image of a welder building the original twin towers in 1970. The emphasis is structure, the emphasis is the power of machines. It is a city without inhabitants. You want brave and noble construction workers. Take a look at Joel Meyerowitz images of the “deconstruction of the World Trade Center.”
I am probably overstating the point. There are as many photographic views as there are photographic eyes and cameras. But I do believe that in this context photography gives us a glimpse of ourselves and our deeper attitudes. It’s meant to do that. In the 1930’s we valued labor and our goal was to put men back to work during the depression. The depression/recession of 2009-2013 what about that. We spent a lot of time pointing fingers. We no longer value work. Unions were to blame, everyone was to blame, except me. We glorified machines and monuments set against hollow cities. After all, the really important question had become who could build the tallest building, the ultimate pinnacle of humanless success.