From Cleveland to the Mahoning Valley, the industrial steel mills of Northeast Ohio qualify equally with the state’s fields and woodlands as iconic 20th century landscapes.

Early February provided a perfect day to photograph one such landscape, the smokestacks at the former J&L Steel melt shop and rolling mill on the west side of the Cuyahoga River.

Purchased from Otis Steel Company, J&L’s mill was home to thousands of steelworkers and millwrights since 1942. Over several generations the facility has been through numerous incarnations, the most recent of which was its acquisition by LTV Corporation (a 1984 consolidation with Republic Steel), a shutdown in 2002 pursuant to ISG’s purchase, and finally the eventual acquisition by Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal and the mill’s reopening in 2004.

The billowing “smoke” animating the image is really only steam as the morning’s low air temperature (–10°) created ideal conditions for condensation. The shot reminds me a little of a Braque or Picasso Cubist painting ... each of the pieces reassembled, seemingly creating more than the sum of their parts. There is something ironically anthropomorphic about the structure with its jaws turned skyward and hot breath billowing in successive bursts. I resisted the temptation to include the sprawling length of the mill in a landscape format.

Finally, rather than producing this as a black and white, which would have reduced the image to a study in shapes, I retained the colors to add tonality and dimension.

Year: 2009
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Collector’s Edition of 10
Dimensions: 16" x 24"