Description: A photographic and essay project by Raymon Elozua examining the disappearing American steel worker from the modern US landscape.
photography (148) xxx (22) raymon elozua (1) steel mills (1) labor unions (1) american industry (1) corporate rhetoric (1)
The following essay was written as an introduction to a catalogue I prepared for a multi-media show, based on the decline of the American steel industry, titled, Home Scrap: Post-Industrial Landscapes, shown at Carlo Lamagna Gallery, NY in 1988. Several of black & white and color photographs were components alongside paintings in the show. Nearly 20 years later, re-examining the photos, I realize that the same issues still remain and that the photographs are still relevant today. Raymon Elozua, 2008
"Two geographies together constitute a "unity of opposites," life space and economic space. Although both are necessary for the sustenance of modern societies, they are inherently in conflict with each other. Over the last two centuries, economic space has been subverting, invading and fragmenting the life space of individuals and communities…We can see the result in the dissolution of life space and their progressive assimilation to economic space. The capitalist city has no reverence for life…It abandons
John Friedman, "Life space and economic space: Contradictions in regional development," manuscript (University of California at Los Angeles, 1981) Quoted in The Deindustrialization of America, Barry Bluestone & Bennett Harrison, Basic Books, NY, 1982.