Made in America: Christopher Payne in Conversation with Alexandra Lange

Hello, good evening. Welcome. I'm Susan Brown. I'm the associate curator and acting head of textiles here at the museum. And I also had the tremendous pleasure of curating the exhibition Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne, which is on view upstairs on the second floor. I am truly thrilled to welcome you here for a conversation between Chris Payne and design critic Alexander Lang. They share a deep knowledge of the cultural history of architecture and they have both spent considerable time considering the role of image making in shaping our understanding of architecture and design. Chris Payne trained as an architect before made in America. He published several books that focused on disused spaces, including New York's forgotten substations, North Brother Island, an uninhabited island in the East River, and Asylum inside the closed world of state mental hospitals. For the past 10 years, he's turned his focus to factories, spaces that are as chaotic and full of activity as his previous subjects were still, and which are in constant flux due to new technologies and shifting global markets. Working in the tradition of photographers like Alfred T. Palmer and Gordon Parks who created heroic images of American workers in the mid- 20th century, Payne makes photographs that celebrate manufacturing and craftsmanship. Alexandra Lang's essays, reviews, and profiles have appeared in Architect, Curbed, Denine, Metropolis, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and many others. Her 2022 book, Meet Me by the Fountain, an inside history of the mall, gave a fascinating behindthe-scenes look at the ambitions and failures of mall design. In 2025, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in criticism for a series of articles on the effect of urban design on children and families, published by Bloomberg City Lab. Tonight, for the first hour or so, Chris and Alexandra will have a conversation with pictures, uh, exploring the role of photography, past and present, in crafting our collective understanding of American industry and labor. There'll be time for questions from the audience at the end. Thank you so much for joining us, and please welcome Chris and Alexandra. Hi. >> Hi. >> How you doing? Thanks for coming. Uh we used to be neighbors. >> Yes. >> And um we we share similar interests in architecture and the built environment. And it's uh when it when we were thinking of doing talks and stuff uh the first person that popped in my mind was you. So this has been a lifelong uh desire to to speak with you about the things that we love. Right. >> Yeah. And I feel like Sorry. Um, it was actually very smooth picking all of the images that we're about to show you tonight because our taste is very similar in photography and we're interested in a lot of the same things, you know, kind of aesthetically and qualitatively. Uh, so yeah, it should be fun. Um, and I think I feel like, you know, the the theme that we're sort of operating under is like what are the the pictures in the backs of our minds that I see when I look at Chris's work or Chris is thinking about when he's making the work because there is this whole, you know, 20th century history of industrial photography. Um, and his work is just merely like carrying it forward, embracing the new technology both like as a photographer and as somebody chronicling industry. >> So, what we're going to show tonight are are favorites. And what's nice about it, it's it's going to be more of a conversation and uh talking about really like what you know when a lot of times when I'm when I'm working, I have all these historical historic images in my head, previous photographers, but you know, you don't really ever stop to ask yourself like what makes a good picture. You know, when you've been doing it long enough, I still make a lot of mistakes, but you kind of know what makes a good picture. But tonight, I think we're going to peel off the the layers a bit and talk about what makes a good picture and how did, you know, how did I get there? Who are the who are the precedents? Um what is industrial photography? >> How does it relate to architecture? We're both um you know, we both kind of work in the fields of architecture. We both think like architects. That's the way we see the world. And how does that relate to to this kind of work? Um, but the first thing I think we want to say is it's a question that gets that I always fear people will ask me. You know, I spend so many hours, hundreds of hours traveling around the country photographing factories and I'm always afraid that someone's going to say why why are you doing this? Why is this important? You know, I get it, but um that's my fear. And I just want to start by saying I I just tell them like everything around you is built in a factory. Your clothes, the furniture, the rug, the windows, the curtains, the speakers, everything, you know, aside from some food. Um, and that's why I do it. And a lot of people just don't realize that the world we live in is based on mass production and precision and the interchangeability of parts so that everything is sort of identical. And uh you know it wasn't didn't used to be like that but now it's just such a common thing that we don't even give it a second thought. We don't really know where the shirt on our back is is made. >> Yeah. But I think one of the things that is interesting as we start flipping images and going back through some earlier industrial photographs is you can see the level of precision and you know the level of moving parts and and the distance from hand work and craft like get larger and larger over time. Like some of some of the old early 20th century factories look pretty homespun from the point of view of 2026. Exactly. >> Yeah. >> So, let's dive in. And we were I was thinking about what image to start with. And it's a it's a recent image. It's not in the show. It's from the Hyundai factory in Georgia. And it it kind of conveys what a lot of factories are like when I'm in there. They're chaotic. There's amazing shots beckon everywhere. There's a lot of movement and there are a lot of robots. Um and uh they are they are everywhere. But uh I thought we thought this was a pretty good way to to kick off this notion of um you know industrial photography. So this is an image that I made in uh 2011. I thought about it for eight years uh after touring this touring the Steinway factory in 2002. Uh it's a view looking through piano rooms at the Steinway factory in Queens. And we were thinking about well what makes a good industrial picture and it's kind of the same like what makes a good architectural photograph because this really is architecture on a smaller scale. It's the built environment. Um but we thought you know form is good. That's you've got to have good form. Um, and I thought this was a good representation of that and repetition. And one of the things that being trained as an architect, you tend to see the world architecturally. And so it's always great if you can translate a three-dimensional image into something that's two-dimensional, like a two-dimensional drawing. You know, when you're in school, you're learning how to draw things, how to represent something in a very clear and concise way and also beautiful. And so, um, when you change your point of view as a photographer, you can often flatten things out and make them look more like a drawing and in that way more understandable. Any of you know what this is? The the peeps. Another thing that we were discussing was uh the importance of color repetition. Um this kind of checks all those boxes and also seeing something that a lot of us know but in a state where it's a little bit surprising. This is before they're covered in yellow sugar. And believe it or not, I actually didn't have one of these when I was at the factory. I was so stressed out about messing up the shot that I didn't even think about eating one. And of course, they don't want you to reach onto the assembly line and pull one off. You want to speak about this? >> Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think in a lot of your photographs, the the color really, you know, helps us as a human like find the humanity in the in these sometimes like very sterile, very like metallic environments. I mean, I'm personally very attracted to colors and then also Chris's photographs that um deal with things that I, you know, sort of have in my life, have touched like the Peeps, um like the pencils, and here, you know, like yarn and textiles. I guess I I find those so much more relatable because again you're making this leap, you know, from the things that you know to how those things are manufactured to then like the beauty of the the photograph of the artwork as an artwork. And so I think some of these um yeah, some of the factories where they're they're making clothes and sort of like homely objects um just have an emotional charge that I personally don't necessarily get from you know pictures of them manufacturing planes. >> Yeah, this is when you take the scale down it becomes much more humanizing. Um, a lot of you know this image because I talk about it every in every lecture. You'll probably know the story that I'm going to tell uh about the mill owner calling me up and and saying, "You should come up today. We're running pink." This is when I was living this is when I was living on Chver Place. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And uh I already had a picture of this in a different color, but it was done at night. It was good, but not great. And um my car was parked right outside my apartment, you know, alternate side parking. It was it was the perfect spot. And you know, the kind where you just sort of when you find a spot like that, you just sort of look at it and you sit in your car for a while. And and so I wavered. I wavered. I didn't want to drive three and a half hours to to make a picture that, you know, I didn't know would would turn out. Um but I made that decision. And obviously there's the the result worked out. And uh I also want to add you know doing this kind of work um and we didn't we didn't talk about this but factories are always changing. You know just like the styles of clothing things going in and out of fashion economic trends rise and fall. Businesses close and factories close. And a lot of places that I've shot over the years you know developed close relationships with these people. They go out of business. Um, and and not so much due to foreign competition, but because there's a no one to take their place, you know, in these older places that that you and I love, no one wants to to learn how to use a, you know, a carding machine that was built 100 years ago. Um, so even though I feel like I have all the time in the world when I'm there, I'm given a lot of access in some places. Uh, it's you're racing against the clock. And so I've always felt a certain urgency to what I do, knowing that, you know, in a few years it's just it's just gone. This is an image we picked because of its architectural quality, right? >> Yeah. It's like they're building a building. >> Yeah. Yeah. the tendency when you go into a car factory uh or anything where there's assembly line, you want to show the assembly line. You want to set get that scale. Rarely can you see something kind of from the side and step back. And uh this is a electric bus factory in California. And I remember when I saw this, you know, buses are kind of made differently than cars. They're they're really built up by, you know, it's like it's like building a house, right? And um I saw what they were doing and I think we came back the next day or at at the end of the day and it was one of those instances where I could just let these guys do what they needed to do. And I've always thought of this is an example of like the way we think, the things we love where there's this architectural underpinning, this grid, and things are happening on top of that organically. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, this one the like the the workers because they're in their blue seats, it's like they're kind of like crawling all over the house. Um, and there's also this really nice repetition of the two ladders. And the ladder obviously is something that we all kind of know in our bodies how big it is, so it gives it scale. >> Yeah. >> Immediately. >> Yeah. And it's it's because you know what a bus looks like. If they were working on something else, it wouldn't you know it wouldn't resonate. And that's something I'll touch upon later, but the kind of familiarity with what you're looking at and seeing it in a different way, in a different state of production, seeing it in a new way, uh, engages the viewer in a in, you know, and and when you get more and more into the future, that kind of cozy relationship doesn't exist. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about um things that have influenced me. And when I was in architecture school, I worked for this organization called Haps Hair, which is part of the National Park Service. And their job is to at least the historic American engineering record part of it, hair is entrusted with preserving, not preserving, but documenting the nation's industrial heritage. And so for several summers during grad school, I got to live in small towns around the country that were the kinds of towns that you would never go to uh if you didn't have a reason to go there. And while my friends were working at fancy architecture firms and asking me why I was living in Alabama, um I I grew to love these places precisely because no one else wanted to go there. And they instilled in me kind of a deep appreciation for American history and ingenuity and technology. And I had no interest in photography when I was doing this. I was making drawings. Um but I got to work with some amazing photographers. And one of them was a guy named Joe Elliot who photographed the Bethlehem uh steel mill. And he saw it when it was still in use uh in in Pennsylvania. And an image like this is one of those things that that is always in my mind as something to chase because it doesn't really exist anymore in this country. Um it's one of the ones that, you know, that I missed. Um and it's, you know, it stays with you. It's like lurking up there. you're always searching for it. But what we love about this is that it shows a sense of um action, you know, not only showing process, but you get the little person next to it and the sense of scale. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things we were talking about earlier in in relation to this and and some of the other photos we're going to show is the fact that like we're talking about this umbrella category of industrial photography, but actually the client for a lot of these photographs is very different. Like this photograph was made for a government program. Like the government wanted to document um American industry, hired photographers, sent them out to these places. When you were working for hair, it was the same thing. >> Same thing. Yeah. >> But now most of the time you're working for a media company, >> editorial. Yeah. My myself, you know, or a commercial commission. But this kind of work, what's what's beautiful about this work is that when we were doing these summer projects, it was a combination of architectural students doing drawings, measure drawings on site, you know, ink on myar, um, historians, and then the photographers would come in and elevate these just benol subjects into art. Um, and this is one that hit me that I saw and I just, you know, he sometimes you see things in glancing in in passing and and they just kind of strike a chord and you're like, "Oh, wow. That's that's cool. I wish I could do that, you know, even not having an interest." But these are just ventilation fans in a tunnel at Yoseite National Park. And um I love this image because it's so simple and clear and it's not trying to be anything more than than what's there. And that's kind of the essence of a, you know, good industrial photography. Um in relation to mine, which I think is a little can be a little bit like over wrought, you know, because I have to I have to sell myself. But for the government, they just wanted give us the facts, show it truthfully, and show it beautifully. Right. But if you I mean, yes, it's very dead pan, shall we say? But if you think about it, you know, an architect did have to do a drawing of those fans at some point. An industrial designer also had to do a drawing of those fans at some point. So in a way the photographer is recognizing that all of those like previous you know design interventions like did a good job arranged them so neatly you know put the circles under another circle you know like there's artistry to it and that's what makes this like relatively simplistic photograph actually like so beautiful and made it memorable for you >> right there's an intentionality to the design and the construction and that the photographer was able to see that you know through all the stuff that might have been there, maybe they did some cleaning, added some lights, and it just everything just sort of works out perfectly and it looks effortless. Um, and then another thing with industrial photography, you know, I always get hung up on process like and with a lot of these editorial commissions, I feel this obligation to show how something's made. You know, if I'm not catching all the key moments, then I'm I'm not doing it justice. But, you know, a lot of viewers don't really care how something's made. They just need a beautiful picture or they need to see the human element. And so one thing, this is another picture by Joe Elliot who I consider my mentor and and a dear friend. But he was always so good at not only showing the machines and the guys, you know, with the big blast furnaces, but he's also showing how they work, the work conditions, and you don't need to have people in them, but to show the spaces where they work, so you get an idea of what it was like to be there. And that's such a more interesting story sometimes. So these are little baskets that they would raise and they'd put their belongings in them. And at the end of the day, they, you know, there's a lock at the bottom and they would lower them. And it's the kind of thing you just don't you don't see anymore, you know. Um, but it was very common at a steel mill. >> Oh, yeah. So, this is one of my choices. So, this this is an industrial photo photograph, though you might not think of this as an industrial photograph because it's actually showing the interior of one of the Shaker built buildings in Hancock, Massachusetts. So this was taken by a photographer named William F. Winter Jr. who actually worked for GE as a photographer. So he had taken, you know, attractively arranged pictures of light bulbs and things like that for GE. and he was hired by a different government uh acronym agency, HABs, the Historic American Building Survey, to survey a bunch of the Shaker villages in the 1930s because already then the Shakers were starting to sort of well shrinking shrinking as a population and um several of the villages had closed. So they wanted to document what the villages were like at that time. But what was interesting is they hired William F. Winter, this industrial photographer, and he took photographs of the Shaker villages as if they were factories essentially, right? Like you can see that the perspective um and the kind of the the lines, the grid, the arrangement, the deep space. like these are the same techniques that were being used for factories and for then you know kind of early modern architecture in the 1930s but he's applying it to these Shaker villages and in fact his photographs help get modern designers interested in the Shakers then and modern designers are still very interested in the Shakers but I think it's kind of like an underststudied aspect of it that actually like his photographs are interpreting the Shakers as protoodern designers. Um, and in fact like this is a workspace. This is the the laundry and of course the the sisters the w the female shakers um would have essentially been doing you know industrialsized you know cooking cleaning laundry in these spaces at the villages. >> Yeah. And and that's um this is a new image you showed me and Habs Habs and Hair have done you can go on the the website and it's it's unbelievable how many things they've documented over the past uh since like 1935 or something. But what I love about these images and you know the previous ones of the steel mill is that they're documenting a way of life and a way of life which is tied to the workspace and and and it's like a whole community. And once these places close, that way of life, that knowledge, those spaces, you know, it's gone. And I think that resonates at least with me because so few of what's so little of what's built now is is purpose-built, you know, for a specific purpose that's not, you know, flexible. Like you look at this or you look at that steel mill with the buckets, you know what it's you kind of have an idea like, oh, this is for something very in particular at a particular time, particular place. And it's it's a it's a beautiful thing and you don't notice it until it's gone. Um, but fortunately they did such a great job of of documenting this stuff that at least we have it in in pictures. One of our favorites. Yeah. This really this really shows the vastness. Um, I think when uh industrial architects like Alfred Khan began designing, you know, the buildings around the assembly lines, um, they just took on this scale that people really hadn't seen before in buildings. And so I think sometimes when the photograph is ostensibly of the assembly line, it's also kind of glorifying like just the vast interior like daylight space that they had to make in order to have make, you know, have those factories work. >> Yeah. This is the the the Louis Olivetti factory. And the thing we love about this is we we love Lu Khan obviously, but that someone a company would hire an architect to not just design their headquarters, but their factory and you just don't you don't really see that now, you know, and that they'd want to show that off. And that uh Ezra Stler, who who made this, you know, you see kind of both worlds. Usually it's just what's being made or you know the building from the outside. Rarely do you get a vast open space like this where you can kind of see you know see everything and uh you know and certainly you're not going to see typewriters made anymore. >> Yeah. And Oliveti um you know was an important like Italian typewriter company but a lot of American industrialists including um Thomas Watson Jr. um who kind of brought IBM into the computer age really studied Oliveti in terms of the way they used design um both of their products in their graphic design of their factories and Oliveti even built worker housing that was very stylish. Um, so it was really a company that a lot of American post-war corporations had their eye on, >> including people like >> Sarin. We just picked this. We were going through the the show this morning and we said, you know, we need some Sarinin. >> Big fans. Big fans. >> Yeah. Yeah. This is This is the John Deere headquarters in um uh in Iowa. What town is it? >> It's Molen, Illinois. It's one of the Quad Cities. >> Quad cities. Yeah. >> And we both had a chance to tour this uh and we both realized that that we had been to the same room in the in this headquarters, the the the maintenance shop, and we'd both open the same drawers. We just sort of when you when when people who have architectural backgrounds see flat files, they just kind of naturally go over there and and open them up and in this maintenance shop where the original drawings from the 60s that you know stamped Sarin and associates with the person's name and it's just you know to be connected to that. Um but maybe you want to speak a little bit about you you did your a lot of work on this. >> Yeah. So my my dissertation was about the concept of the post-war corporate utopia. So I focused on four companies from like the mid-50s to the mid60s that had really um basically hired the best designers in the US at every level of their company, you know, for their stationery, for their tractors, for their headquarters, for um for their landscape, etc. And so one of the ex exemplary companies was John Deere um who built this headquarters in Molen um designed by Aerosin. The landscape outside was designed by um Hideo Sasaki a really important modernist landscape architect. Um they had now I can't remember somebody redid their logo. They had Henry Drifus doing their tractors. It was just like this moment in which all of like the best people in America, the best designers in America were coming to Molen and trying to make this place like as beautiful as possible. Um, this shot is of uh a a passageway that leads from the sort of corporate headquarters building to this separate building where they had all of the latest tractors on display. So, anyone who came to town could see like the latest and greatest. Um, and they have a lot of other historical material about John Deere there. Um, but you can just see like kind of the relentless perfectionism of the grid that was, you know, so endemic to 1960s architecture and then it lines up so beautifully with the aesthetics of architectural and industrial photography. Like, you know, everything is kind of radiating off each other to, you know, like look how precise everything is lining up. >> Yeah. And and it speaks to like mass production and precision. And I remember when I went on this tour late one night, uh I remember standing in one of these bridges because the the landscape is kind of like this. And so they have these buildings that are separate and they have these bridges going across and it's it's just I mean I didn't see the land. The guy said you should come back here at dawn when you can see the landscape. But the building is amazing. that if you have that kind of eye, you you were just drawn to, you know, the picture in the corridor. I mean, it's so boring, you know, when you think about it. But if you're in the space, like you can't help but you want to just you want to make that picture. >> Yeah. You're always trying to line yourself up like, am I standing on the seam and the Toronto floor that will allow me to like look through the window to the building across the ravine? And you know, I mean, like the great thing about these architects is they were so obsessive. Like, you know, that they lined everything up. You don't have to worry that like somebody got lazy, you know, like out there in the distance. Like they definitely like did a drawing so that everything would line up. >> Yeah. Yeah. But it it's interesting that that the precision of this style of architecture and the fact that it carries over into those in some cases into these factories. It's just it's a wonderful like when I think about well when would I have wanted to have you know taken pictures uh and and to go back to this time where you could get the factory and the headquarters and and the furniture everything was just this it was a complete concept you know >> um so I want to go back a little bit and we'll talk about things that have influenced me but what industrial photography has been used for uh and during the war when you really see it coming to its own. It was used for propaganda uh for raising, you know, national morale. Um and these were pictures by Alfred Palmer. The he was commissioned by I think the office of war information. You know, it's essentially a government agency that is funding the arts. And I was really influenced by these. I remember when I when I saw them for the first time and I I was just starting out in industrial photography, just trying to figure out what I wanted to do. when I was still shooting with a a view camera on film and I looked at these and I said, "Wait a minute, he's shooting with a he's shooting on film, too." And not only film, he's shooting with like slide film. So, there's no there's no tolerance for error. And he's shooting with strobes because he's overpowering the existing light. And these people look great. And he's shooting jet he's shooting engines. And I I I was like, "That's that's what I want to do. I got to teach myself how to do that. Um, so they were a huge influence on me. And the thing I really love about these is that these people, it could have been made yesterday. And they're obviously, you know, they're they're propaganda. They're they're showing these people in the engines in the best light, but it's so when you see things in color that are lit that well, that are framed that well, um, the people you're young, you you just feel like it could be yesterday. and and yet it's 1943, you know. >> Yeah. I think it's really easy to be caught up in the glamour of it. I mean, like it was very very effective propaganda. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's and the other thing that I noticed having been to a lot of factories now is that certainly in the US, you know, people don't they don't dress up to go to work. Uh and that's something I always struggle with. And if I find someone I like to photograph, I might say, "Wear that shirt again tomorrow." Or, "Do you have anything that's not like a black hoodie?" Uh, but back then they they really dressed up. It's something I see in in I've seen it like in South America and Europe and Asia where people have uniforms. There's a much there's like a you know, a dress code. They want everyone kind of looking the same and it makes it a lot easier to to photograph. But these are just these are really I I just always love looking at these um you know seeing people making things but at scale. That's something that I struggle with a lot is finding that sweet spot because there's a lot of cool stuff still being made but a lot of it's artal and it's more like someone quit their job in finance and opened up a shop to make you know whatever and it just doesn't have the sense of scale that these places do. And yet this is hand craftsmanship but at a huge scale. Uh it also brings up something that we were going to talk about in the beginning which is sort of you know form form right there's form there's light there's color circles. Uh you can never go wrong with a circle. Um and just to prove that point in these next few slides. I see an image like that and it gets filed away in my head. And so when I see something like this of a electric motor, I'm recalling what I've seen and then I do it again in this picture that's upstairs of a of a a um PET scanner. Um but the idea of using these strong forms and showing people working inside something is is really powerful. uh you know they're inhabiting the world in which they work. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean the circle for me just it makes them really feel like they are you know handmaidadens to the machine, right? There's something so powerful about the circular form like the the human can't help but look a little bit vulnerable um in in the center of that circle. Maybe I've watched too many sci-fi movies, but like I I just feel like there's an element of danger in these that is different from the ones that are more gritted. Like the grid to me is kind of calming. Like it feels endless and open, whereas this it's like, okay, they're like they're very in the eye. >> Yeah. They're they're they're inside this thing. >> Yeah. >> And you know, um something could go wrong. Not Not usually. Not yet. >> Right. But this is one of the ones I was thinking about when I was talking about how like in the past even the industry looks more artisal, right? Like these wheels look, you know, somebody built them too. >> Yeah. They're wood they're wood forms. There's a great I don't know if you all have seen, but you can look it up. Uh there's a wonderful group of films that were made like in the 50s and 60s of like the making of matchbox cars or or globes, earth globes or uh dolls, you know, in England. And it's artistal work, but it's done at scale. Uh, and this is um a wonderful photographer uh Maurice uh Bloomfield in England and he was you know when I discovered his work it was another kind of aha moment because he's working in color a lot of the times and he's showing these industries that they're just gone you know um and they were so it's not like we don't use these things anymore it's just they're made probably in Asia and they're not made artisally like like this. I actually forget what that's for. Um I I have it written down in my notes, but we were trying to wing it today. You can you can ask me afterwards. But but it the beautiful thing is it's not the object itself, it's the formwork for it. And that's another thing that has always eluded me is to see because the formwork is often more interesting than, you know, the machine the machine that makes it is more interesting than what's being made. But yeah, you're right. It's it's it's it's an artal process, but it's done at scale. And then there's the color and the circle. I mean, these are the kind of things that as an industrial photographer, I I dream about finding something like this. This is another one of his shots. Um, we talked about like propaganda in the war, but there's like a sense of optimism in the 50s and the 60s and the 40s where kind of anything's possible, you know, and people dress up. They're they're colorful, but there's a sense of like abundance post-war like abundance in these photographs, which is which is um there's certainly abundance now, but I think there's more optimism in these And I had to get in a couple of these. These are This is the Diego Rivier uh mural in the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, right? This is the Ford. He had this commission for the the Ford Motor Company. Um and to me, this is like kind of like the holy grail of of industrial imagery. Um it just checks all the boxes. It shows how things are made. It shows the worker as heroic. it shows them as slave, you know, it's it just it's overwhelming. Um, but we were we both like uh these, you know, utopian works of architecture, but but more importantly like things that have been funded by corporations or the government where they're building like an entire city or a corporation or a fac, you know, campus. It's just something you don't see now, like the idea of the government funding artwork on a mass scale. Um, and so this is the epitome of that. And also, this is a project I'm working on on uh New Deal murals and post offices. And a lot of these would show local industry. So, you know, industrial photography and imagery is not just not just photographs. It's also paintings of that period where everyone was kind of showing what was going on in the country and celebrating it or critiquing it. But, and the great thing about these post offices is that since they're local, you often see what was the local industry. And um so to me, this is just like, you know, it's a photograph on a a different kind of photograph. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure they often included like portraits of people that the people in the town would have recognized. So it's also it's like like you're famous on the wall of your own post office. Yeah. >> In a sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. It it was very personal, you know, and the post offices at that time were where the town came to meet where information was was uh was was passed. Uh but it gets back to this point that you know we talk about and it's the funding it's the investment in beautiful you know beautiful built things that will benefit more than just the corporation or you know the post office. I mean this is for the public. >> Yeah. And then there's sort of like in some of these images that I dug up, this is an Ezra Stler image of a Columbia record factory here in New York City, Long Island City, probably in the 50s. But we saw we showed those things that are more propaganda have a positive effect. And I mean, I love things like this because it doesn't exist anymore. I will never make a picture like this, right? But you begin to realize like, oh, this is kind of monotonous work, right? >> This is also um this might also be in New York City or was in New York City in RCA. Yeah. >> Yeah. I think so. >> But there's beauty in it. Like we find beauty in it. That's the first thing I'm drawn to. But then you begin to realize it's oh my god, it's pretty it can get repetitive. telephone operators. Another thing that I'll never I'll never photograph this, but once again, we romanticize it, but it's who knows if it was actually really that interesting to do. Makes for a great photograph, but this is a good one. >> Yeah. Yeah. because this this has this is at the Hines um factory in Pittsburgh which was designed by S Soom um and it's Ezra Stiller. So you get again like the grids of the modern architecture with the like this the ceiling, the lights on the ceiling, the way the tables are arranged, but then the ketchup looks rather sinister, I think. Um um that hit of like the hit of color is like, okay, it's heights. We know it's ketchup, but is it really ketchup? Well, and and we know they they staged it, but >> yeah, >> when I look at this, it's once again, it's an image that I will never get the photograph because this is not how they would test ketchup now. >> Yeah. >> Um Yeah. >> But it's wonderful. You know, people in uniforms, this perfect environment, usually the places when I go to something, it's not this beautifully designed >> and the old stuff doesn't look this pristine. And so Ezra Stler got in there just at the right time, you know, and to have seen it in that condition is pretty, you know, who knows what he thought, but um I'm I'm envious. >> This is the uh this is a a newspaper in um I think it's is this Columbus or >> Yeah, Columbus, Indiana. >> Yeah. Which is a big architectural mecca. It's a newspaper printing plant. And when I was growing up in Boston, the Boston Globe had their printing plant and headquarters that faced the the road and you could see the presses. They had left one of the facades open. It was just glazing and you could see these presses running at night. And to a little kid, it was like, you know, seeing into Willy Wonka's factory. Um, but I love this because it it's everything we've talked about. It's it's, you know, it's the union of all these >> Yeah. And I think I think the I think it's the Republic is the name of this newspaper, but they had the printing plant and then also the um like the reporter's desks are essentially like on the other side of this building that is in the center of town. So it was like the newspaper um you know the truth teller was in this glass box located in the the center of town. Um, so yeah, it was really like kind of a profound statement about the importance of the media in that local economy. Um, and and as Chris said, the Columbus, Indiana is a town where Cumins Engine Corporation is is the largest employer. And the the Miller family who owns Cumins had this um program to subsidize like good modern architecture for their schools, for their banks, etc., etc. Um, so this building is part of a whole like set of buildings um that kind of, you know, glorified the, you know, ordinary workings of a Midwestern town. >> Yeah. And it's just once again, it's like to see this now, right? First of all, you wouldn't see a printing press, but you wouldn't see it showed, you know, displayed like that. Yeah. >> Like a jewel in a in a box. And it's, you know, it's very modern modern architecture and the synthesis of like investing in a a a place that has one purpose. You know, once that printing press is in there, they're not going to retrofit it to become a retail complex in in five years. Like it's this is what they're building it for. >> This is your favorite. >> So, yeah. So, th this is also Ezra Stler. This is basically the same era as as the ketchup photo. Um, this is Connecticut General Life Insurance Corporation in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Um, also designed by S Soom with interiors by Florence Null. So, to me, this is just like the ultimate Ezra Stler architectural photo because you have this suburban gritted campus. like the the colors are so clean and it's like the the desks and the employees extend into infinity >> and it and it's just an extension of like you know these factory pictures where it's a total environment they're investing in everything from the landscape to the headquarters to the factory to the furniture the signage and when you walk into like when I walked into John Deere that headquarters if if you're, you know, unless you're blind, like it's it is just it's you kind of go I was freaking out because it's >> Yeah. You're just really you're not used to everything being thought through. >> Exactly. Yeah. Like vision. You feel the vision of the architect of this intention um that it's more it's about a sense of place and a sense of purpose and that that it comes across. >> Yeah. And it's also interesting in this case because we see a shift from, you know, kind of like blue collar industry to white collar industry. Like what is Connecticut General doing? It's it's paper pushing, right? It's an insurance company. And there are other there other photos in this sequence um of rooms with like stacks of paper on which they would have printed their insurance policies. So even there there's this kind of like quasi industrial moment with the stacks of paper but mostly it's it's the labor of people at their typewriters >> right and it doesn't you know I guess an industrial that's sort of saying that industrial photograph doesn't have to be about like a machine it's about people working right and as we know a lot of things that people do uh those jobs get phased out things we take for granted now you know might not exist in 10 years so like something like this you And that's like when I was at John Deere, I went there after the pandemic and the guy was saying that, you know, half the building was empty, right? So you've got this landmark building. It's and it's cool when it's empty because it's you just have the run of the place. But at the same time, you're thinking like, wouldn't it be great to actually see people working in here and yet as we know, you know, once people are not working in an office, they don't want to come back. Um, and probably people out there have long commutes. So >> yeah. Oh, yeah. So, this was one of my choices. I actually forgot that these same EMS chairs are what you are all sitting on right now. But this is from um this 1960 short film by Charles and Ray Emmes called A Kaleidoscope of Chairs. Um and this you can you can watch it online sort of bootleg. Um, but it's this film is really interesting to me because I think what the EMSes were trying to do with it was to take the industrial photograph like into motion and into music because it has like a jazz soundtrack and they have all of these photos of these, you know, EMS molded fiberglass chairs like coming off the production line in these vast numbers, but then they make them dance um and they turn them into a kaleidoscope. scope and you see like Charles and Ray like sitting on them and you know it's cut so they seem to be like boopping around the room. So I feel like they were trying to take some of the like glamour and joy of some of those industrial photographs but you know make it move because they felt like that was the next thing for modernity was to you know like have it be a a moving film rather than a still photograph. And it speaks to like just the ind the idea of industrial design permeating everything. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Which I guess it's happened but not at this level of like I mean we're still loving these kinds of chairs. >> Yeah. They're made of something different now though. Uh to be less polluting. So, let's sort of talk about the darker side of this this genre, >> all of this industrial celebration. But >> but um now I I look at an image like this and I go ballistic over the the you know this giant um press or forge and uh and then you think like oh wow that you know what else is it saying and it's saying as the nation became industrialized uh and these factories are huge and you know people are working crazy hours and they're kind of like cogs in this machine and you know just to see how small he is and it you know you realize like and I've seen this like I go in there I'm I'm in these places for like a day a couple days and I love it but I do talk to people and you realize like this is hard work um and it's not necessarily to be romanticized even though it's important it's just it's it's tough work. This is one we love. It's a textile mill um in Massachusetts taken by if I get the pronunciation right Frank Delano who was one of these government photographers during the war sent around the country to document what was happening and picture like this right has has sort of two sides right >> yeah I mean it it's so beautiful first of all right I had never seen this before today and I was like oh my god like what is happening with this photo like we were already thinking about um like the twopoint perspective and these sort of grids extending into infinity. And here's one of them, but really, you know, from before the modernist era. Um, and you're seeing this clash between um the past and the form of the house and the modernity of that, you know, like infinite litup grid, but you know what's actually happening? >> Yeah. And they're working through the night. We think it's, you know, I think it's like amazing because I like things that operate around the clock. It means that I can photograph there all the time, right? They don't they don't kick me out when the the first shift ends at 3:30, but someone has to get up and and do that third shift, and that that probably sucks. Um, and the work, as we know, in some of these other pictures in the Lewis Hine shots that really showed child labor um and >> yeah, >> change things. >> Yeah. So this is a a Louisis Hine photo um taken for a child labor organization in the in the 19s. Um so this is at um a textile mill in South Carolina and he was sent out specifically to take pictures of children working in hopes of you know changing the child labor laws. So, this photograph is actually like part of a political movement and it has again like all of the hallmarks of these other photos we've been talking about. It's very beautiful, but it was, you know, direct directed at at telling the terrible story of this, you know, very small child forced to work in a textile mill. And I've always been familiar with these, but you can look them up online and it's incredible how many mills he got access to, right? And how many children are working and they're just they're all variations of kind of the same thing. And I've been fortunate to actually be in some of these older mills where they still have equipment like this. And it's very easy to imagine, you know, the kids working there because they had little little hands and they could pick up the bobbins and stuff. Um, and I've seen carts exactly like that. Uh, and I don't know, there's something about these images that I find much more powerful than the ones I make. And maybe that's because they're, you know, Lewis Hine and they're they're original and they speak to a way of life, a community, you know, a community built around the mill that is gone, you know. And so when I'm photographing some of these older mills, I really feel like I'm I'm photographing a relic which has been disconnected from from its history. It's still there, but that sense of community uh of the town working around the mill is it's gone. And so I'm finding little bits and pieces, but it's not like the way of life is doesn't exist. >> Yeah. This is another Ezra stole image I think from the the TV factory here in New York. Um, and also, you know, I just found it the other day and I thought it'd be cool to include it because he took so many pictures. You know, there's so much out there and and usually people only see the ones that are famous. But this just speaks again to repetition. And the other thing I liked about it, the reason why I'm really showing it is because one thing I struggle with when I go in and make these pictures is the clutter, right? There's it's noisy. It's dirty. It's cluttered. The lighting is crappy. And I look at Ezra's stuff and usually, like I said, you only see the good stuff. But if you go poking around the um the esto inventory, you see that he had he was grappling with the same things. These factories looked pretty much the same, right? I mean, the stuff was cooler, right? More photogenic, but there's still boxes in the background, right? which he I would have I would have lit it in such a way that it was dark and you just saw the people and things. >> I was actually fascinated that you do like move things around like I mean I I think you know it's like there are some photographers that would never like touch anything in the environment. So are you moving things out of the background or you just like leaving them in the dark? >> I would light it so that you wouldn't really see it so that it would disappear. I love it because now I see that it was he was struggling with the same things I struggle with. Um but yeah, I will do whatever I can to make it look um its best or should I say to remove any what I think are distractions, visual distractions from the story that I want to tell, from the emotions that I want to, you know, raise. Um and this is another one I found yesterday and I I couldn't believe it that he took this. Not only did he take this picture in black and white, he took it in color. And I I'm just struggling. I'm really wondering someone like Ezra Stler who was just so dialed into like the architecture. And yet, you know, you he would get these I think he would get these commissions to do the the headquarters or the main building and then you'd also have to shoot the factory. And you can see that that what he was drawn to. And I'm still wondering what drew him to this. But it makes me feel better because he there was as much clutter back then. It might have been newer clutter. The factory might have been newer. It might have been a little more colorful, but there's still a lot of stuff. And maybe he just was like, you know what? I love this because it's such a mess and I'm going to do it. And the guy there is, you know, a good model and it's got that perspective. But yeah, so >> then there are other photographers. this guy named Chris Killip who was a UK photographer and he photographed he was commissioned to photograph the Pirelli Tire Factory in England. He'd been like a fashion photographer, right? and he went to this factory and he kind of was by then he was like a street photographer and he tried to apply his street photography approach to this dark and dirty factory and his he just wasn't getting good results and so he said I need I need to do this old school and he went back to his 4x5 camera he got his strobe light and he actually moved took an apartment near the factory so he could embed himself in this face and get to know these people. Um, and really this is where industrial photography is not about what's being made, it's about it's about the people. Yeah. And to that end, here's another one by Gordon Parks. Um, Pittsburgh was it Pittsburgh. Uh, they make grease. Pittsburgh. Uh, I forget the name of it, but it's a grease factory, and they made grease for, you know, armament during the war. All those tanks and trucks and planes need grease. Pittsburgh. Uh, Pittsburgh. Um, it's written there. >> Yeah. No, this one is really nice because it's like there's no highlights, right? Like we're living in kind of like a dark realm of like, you know, making something dirty. The workers get dirty, their sm, you know, the smock is dark. And yeah, this is where you start to see the, you know, the the negative side of industry, like does this really look like shouldn't he be wearing a mask? You know, this like most of these photos are pre- OSHA. Um, and so yeah, it's like yes, photographers were used to glorify industry. photographers were also used like Lewis Kahine, you know, to create political change. Um, and then sometimes they're just, you know, documenting how hard life is. >> Yeah. But the crazy thing is he was commissioned by company. So this isn't it's a critique, but he's just showing what's there. So it's not like and they probably saw it and they probably thought they were great pictures. But I think in his head he was also using it because a lot of his other work is you know more social or social that's his that's his interest and this is a tool kind of to show the you know the racism and the working conditions and like you know there weren't standards to which this could be compared to but it doesn't take you know anyone can see that this is like really messy work like no one wants this kind of up. >> Yeah. So, this is a this is a photograph um by my brother Jeremy Lang, who's a a documentary photographer um from a series that he photographed in 2018 called After Golden Leaf, which is about traces of the tobacco industry in North Carolina. Because like all the time we were growing up in North Carolina, you know, there were still cigarette factories in Durham. you could smell the tobacco drying in the spring in these big industrial buildings. And then in 1999, there was a big lawsuit that basically closed all of that down. Um, but tobacco is still being worked and produced in North Carolina. So, he drove all around the state looking for it. And this is just, you know, a photograph. You know, there are still people out there picking tobacco with their hands. Um, so yeah, I think this is a really good companion to the the one just before the Gordon Parks photograph. Yeah. Just talking about um, yeah, the kind of hand work that is still being done, you know, who's doing it >> and you can really see I mean, this is nice. You you can't see the the guy so much, but you can see his hands, which are are dirty and clearly, you know, like have the marks of somebody who's working every day, right, >> in the field. I think so often we forget that like most of this stuff even though there's a lot of automation people tend to these machines you still have people on assembly lines even if they're not actually doing the work and it's like I said it's extremely repetitive um a lot of the hard work now is done by robots for sure but it's you know for for like you and me we we work in a creative world every day can be different and we have a lot of choices to make u but a lot of people who you know like work in these uh Asian factories don't um this is a Bratinsky. Every everyone knows Bratinsky. But I love this picture for um a particular reason because I know that to make this picture was really he had to really test the limits of his camera. Um and I just know it was a it was a tough technical shot. And I love how it's you know you see this mirror. So it's this it's like a two single point perspectives which you never you never see. This is something also that doesn't really exist in the US. So on one level I'm I'm searching for this kind of image, you know, because that repetition and now you're getting repetition of people, but it just it doesn't really exist on this scale. >> Oh yeah, this is another one I chose. Um this is from so like earlier we showed you those habs and hairs and WPA photographs. This is from another government photography program called Docu America that was run by the EPA in the early 1970s. And the charge that was given to the photographers was to document the built environment. And this the sense was at that time the EPA had just been created. So they would document the built environment as it was and hopefully they would come back 5 years later after the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act had um done what they were supposed to do and they would document a different environment. Um so this is um a picture of a neighborhood called Little Korea in Birmingham, Alabama. Um and those the smoke stacks are from US Steel. um in this neighborhood was a subject. This was taken in 1972 and basically the same year um Birmingham sued US Steel to try to make them clean up their act. Um so the photographer of this is a guy named um Leroy Woodson and he has a whole series taken in Birmingham um of this neighborhood of people in the hospital with emphyma um including like x-rays of their lungs and then of a nent environmental group that was trying to clean everything up. So he's really he he shows like a whole portrait of everything I would say around the industry. So everything that happens like outside the factory. >> Yeah. That's that's one of the reasons why I love doing this. I I would be great to do more of this, but there's so much to to photograph. You know, if you go to the like what's being made is just the touchstone, you know, it's much more interesting when you can kind of show the whole the community, you know, and the effects it has and who's doing the work. And in in that ca in that in that way, you could make one place your whole like you could work on it your whole life. Um, so just if you go there when I shoot things, I'm always aware that the story extends beyond those walls and that it could just keep going. Um, so we wanted to kind of wrap up a little bit by saying like, well, what do factories look like now? The factories of the future. We've seen some old ones. Um, this is Spirit Aerospace in Witchah, Kansas. probably the one place I've been to which was lived up completely to my expectations and exceeded them. Um they make planes for Boeing and uh we think of Boeing as like they make planes. Boeing is just the company that assembles the planes and all the parts that are made by other factories elsewhere around the world. A lot of these factories especially at this scale look like they did you know 80 years ago. This was used to make uh this factory is used to make bombers during the war. And so one of the reasons why it resonated with me is because when you walk in there you feel like you are stepping back in time and you're seeing, you know, something that you thought was gone. Um it's very rare, but I find at the really really big places if you kind of like close your eyes a bit and uh just you know not really try to look at anything particular but you do feel like you are transported. This is that Hyundai factory that we started out with. And it shows like what's possible if you hire an architect, a good architect, and you have a vision not just for the factory itself, but like for the entire campus, um, which is what they're building in uh in Georgia uh outside of uh Savannah. But it's amazing. It didn't feel like a factory. A lot of it's automated, so there's just less people. There's a lot of kind of uh uh I forget what you call them, AGVs, automated automatic guided vehicle or something. You see them everywhere, but they they shuttle parts back and forth. Um in addition to robotic arms on the line, but when I was here, I was just really struck by the fact that it was like uh it was a really nice place to be in. Um and very well designed, very well laid out. They laid it all out in Korea and then they built it here in America. Um, and so everything feels like it's supposed to be where it's supposed to be. Um, a struggle that I have with the work I do today is that I'm always searching for things that I've missed. You know, records, TVs, things that just aren't made anymore. Um, and a lot of things that are made now are made behind uh they're made in like plexiglass cases, assembly lines. You don't know what you're looking at. And there's this term that someone an old friend came up with a while back called downward aesthetic mobility where you know not only the things that they're making are becoming less designed and intentional but the machines that make them and the way they're made are just becoming less beautiful and photogenic. Uh and that's why it's so much fun to photograph an old building because or an old factory because they might have a machine in there which is more interesting than the thing being made. That's not the case now. And so I have to work very hard opening things up, trying to change what's on the line. Um, this is an agitator for a washer, you know, and trying to get an agitator that's big enough that it will fill the frame of the picture. Um, and getting the factory people to work with me to kind of shut a line down and >> so that you can get in there >> to get in there, light it, clean it up. um because things just aren't as photogenic as they used to be and a lot of times you don't know what you're looking at. Um this is the Roman space telescope that I shot for the Atlantic and uh it's not like the Apollo era where you kind of know what it is right away. here you're just I walked in there and it's like well what am I is that what is that you know >> um and so you have to consider the environment and there's our grid again right >> how do you make this object fit in this space and give it a sense of order and like uh when when a lot of it is very cluttered and and how do you show people in it and scale and and create a story out of a very static object Um, the other challenge I face is that, you know, there's a familiarity between with pianos and pencils, things we know. You talked in the beginning about clothing, you know, furniture, but things like microchips, you can't even see how those are made because it's so small. And the machines that etch those patterns are, you know, $400 million a piece. So whereas they might stop a line to make those agitators because they're not using that machine at that moment, they're not going to open up a $400 million machine so that I can get my little picture. Plus, it's full of intellectual property. So how do you show industrial making of things? How do you can what is that really about? you know, and it can be about the neighborhood. It can be about, you know, the ill effects, uh, you know, the human condition. It it's also for me a lot about complexity, you know, and I can't explain how a microchip is made. I don't even know how they work really um on a superficial level. So, how do you show complexity? A lot of times you just have to walk all over these vast facilities in the basement above trying to find a picture that conveys complexity so that we can at least appreciate how much effort it takes to make something so small. So we'd like to end with just some we were thinking what like what makes the perfect picture? What what's what are the funnest pictures to make? Um, and for me it's always been these environmental portraits, you know, there aren't many people who get as excited about a dishwashing I mean a washing machine agitator as I would. Uh, and so you need to get people in these pictures to humanize them. And a lot of the pictures in the show have people in them. And having given a lot of tours now, it's interesting to see what what people gravitate towards and it's always the ones that they can connect with. um that where the the person is who's been doing this their whole life perhaps, you know, looks like they are a master of their craft. And that's been a lot of fun to connect with people on that intense level of even for just an hour or two, they are the most important people in the world to me when I'm making that picture. And uh you know, it's my job to honor what they do. So, this is a uh a mill that makes carpets down in um in Georgia. And you know, I'm haunted a lot by those Lewis Hine pictures because they're things, you know, they weren't great conditions. But it's a way of life that I I missed, you know, the whole textile industry. I missed that. I saw the remnants of it when I was growing up in New England. And you saw it. You probably would have seen a lot of mills down south, right? >> Yeah. I mean, in Burlington when I was young, they were I mean, they still make some clothes there, but they made a lot of clothes, but I have to say that it was mostly like extremely boring clothes because it's it's like the Hannes factory. So, it's like tube socks, though. I mean, it would be fun to see what you could do with a tube sock factory. C >> circular knitting machines are very beautiful. But the fun thing that that that because I've seen so much now um and I have this kind of like to-do list in my head, but when I see something like this and a master craftsman and this sort of scenario, when I I remember when I saw this, I walked in and I said, there is a way to kind of bring that whole textile story full circle, you know? So, in the show, we've got the pink that pink Carter thing, the pink wool, and then we have this. And I don't need to show all the other stuff in between. I'd like to Susan and I would love to show more textile stuff, but this makes me feel better and that I can get kind of a Louiswis Hine picture without the child labor. Um, and bring that story full circle. I think you all know what if you live in New York, you kind of know what this is. Um, this is from the Coney Island overhaul shop where uh no up uh the 207 shop where they rebuild subway cars and um we went through the whole alphabet and we settled on the queue and I told uh Gay, that's the name of this woman here to wear purple the next day. So, she had to rewear her shirt. But these are the things that are important to me. um getting it right because if she was wearing black or gray, you know, it wouldn't be the same picture. So, it's colorful but also complimentary colors, you know, and goes back to the grid and the circle and all that. And um you know, it's a fun moment when you when you know you're you found something unique and special. This is Ziljen's symbol. Um, with the previous picture, I had probably two years. I could go back and forth to the overhaul shops. Sometimes I take like a year off, right? I only had four hours in this factory where they make the finest symbols in the world. Um, a company like Ziljen doesn't need me to promote them. So they're not going to give me free run of the place like you know an old textile mill owner would you know turn those are the lights turn them out when you're done. So I have to walk in um and I have to quickly identify what to me is the most important moment in production that aha moment when in this case a piece of metal is transformed into a musical instrument. So really, you know, and I think Ezra probably thought this too, um, how do you distill a whole process down into one picture so that when you walk away with one image, that's kind of what stays in your head, you know, and um, and also the person, you know, the guy with the ponytail and the denim, you people just you see you see these people and you just know that that's that's the guy. >> Yeah. Yeah. He's a great body language like Yeah. kind of like moving into it, being absorbed by it. >> Yeah. >> And it's that, you know, it's the kind of production moving that that stick, cutting into the metal, watching him, setting the camera up, and then letting them do their work and not even staging it, you know, because you want that that sense of uh of, you know, spontaneity, you know, and and like he's he's he's he's being true. He there there's nothing faking it because if he was faking it, he would ruin that symbol and then they would be really annoyed with me. So, and then um yeah, >> no, I mean I love this one, but also this is another circle one. I didn't realize this when we were talking about it before, but when you were talking about the circles and I was talking about people being sucked into the circles, this is like this is another one of the circle ones. This is This is the ultimate circle one. And this is a a perfect example. So I have versions of this without the guy, but I knew, >> but then it's just a tire >> and you don't know how big it is. >> So this tire is over 13 feet in diameter. It's used for mining trucks. Um and it was the last shot for that day in the shoot. And they'd give me one day to shoot this tire factory in um in Georgia. And they weren't letting me shoot the the wonderful kind of waffle iron that makes that that makes the tread. It's the IP is like you think it was like military grade. So they wouldn't even open that up for me. So what's frustrating is you will show up to a place hoping you can get something. They say no, but you're like, "Oh, when I get there and I show them what I want to do, they they'll they'll probably maybe they'll change their mind." Nothing. And so I knew that, you know, I've got 30 minutes to make the hero shot. And without the guy, it's just attire. And originally, he was also wearing a black hoodie. So, you know, color is is everything, you know. >> Did you make him borrow something from a friend? Like >> I mean, that's that's a real Bridgestone. >> Oh, okay. >> Yeah. So, he had one. It just he wasn't wearing it, but he had to get out of the tire, you know. Um, >> how how do you get out of the tires? Now I'm really thinking about this. >> They they have little, you know, they have little ladder in there. >> Yeah, but he's actually buffing it. Why they were buffing it when it's going to be used in a mining open mining pit, >> but they do they >> So he was doing a legitimate job. >> He was just wearing the wrong thing. >> This is completely because I would have I wouldn't have seen that picture unless I had seen someone in it. So yeah, I knew that was the one that we had to get. Um, so we'd like to end with uh the American flag, um, which is also on view. And you know, this is a project I'm continuing to work on. It still interests me. And one of the things that interests me is that is that that that why I'm drawn to it is because every time I walk into a factory, I still feel the sense of creative possibility. Anything can happen. there's always something I haven't photographed yet, a picture that I want to, you know, insert into this bigger story. But the other thing that I've noticed over the years is that factory floors, and you mentioned this, like sports teams or something that that there are very few places in America now that are uh kind of democratic. And the wonderful thing I've noticed about factories is that everyone has to work together as a team towards a common goal. and and in this era of polarization, I I think that gives us a lot of hope. Thank you. >> All right, we have time for about two questions. So, >> hi. Uh well, they handed me a mic, so >> um >> Oh, oh, there there you are. Yeah. Yeah. >> Um how many or do you have a sense of how many of the shops or factories you go to are union shops? And how do you think that compares to some of the older photos that inspired you? And is that something you think about as you work? >> Um yeah, I do because I love unions. I love the idea of them, but it actually they're very hard to to photograph and because they get suspicious uh when when I'm there and and then I I will have to meet the union rep. Um it's a lot harder to get union people to stay late. So, you know, just just because like what's what's that? Um I tend to start my day, you know, I get going around four, right? and they're legally they can't stay and and so a lot of these people don't mind staying but the the the companies don't want to pay them you know overtime and and so before I know it I can cause a lot of problems on the back end that I'm not even aware of you know pulling someone off the line who's more than happy to show me something and yet you know there are ramifications in in that there you know there are all these rules and so uh you know it all depends it all depends on on what factor you're at. You You never know. You never know. But sometimes having a union there can make it harder for me to to make pictures. Yeah. Uh sir. Yep. >> I'm always stand It's that's an easy question. It's just you got to change your point of view. So I think anytime I can get higher, I can get perspective on it and flatten it or just show it in a different way, in a clearer way than you would see it. You know, some things are great at eye level, but more often than not, you're going to get something a little more interesting if you look at it kind of from above or maybe at an angle. Um, it's just a it's very easy for me to just do the things that I'm used to to be lazy and then I go up on a ladder. I'm like, what was I like what am I doing? Like, how long have I been doing this? And and just taking a little more time to set something up and to see all the different options. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, sir. and a lot of those pictures a lot of those pictures this scale and the human element and obviously I think that you also touched with the first image of the robotics and you also touched on that I'm just wondering from a historical point of view because so few people get access to these environments um is there an urgency that you feel that you need to capture before you know you mentioned how things are disappearing how things are disappearing what is what will disappear today that is your role um as as a privileged you know as so few people get to go into these environments that you feel is your responsibility to capture >> yeah you you never know there's something in the show that I learned just last week couple weeks ago is no longer in use because they just couldn't perfect it and when I made that picture I thought oh this is the way of the future. Whereas I just also read that you know they're making big investments now into like uh you know V8 engines and I thought that wouldn't have happened. So you never you never know. Um and I always just try to if I'm there uh I do my research and I just try to photograph what I can because there's there's just no there's no way to predict. Um, if I did, then I would I would have a list of, you know, a to-do a better to-do list, but I I don't. And I'm always surprised by what opens and closes. >> Yeah, >> we have time for one more question. >> Um, I guess I'm wondering what is the difference for you? Well, for the view, what do you think the difference is that the viewer takes away uh from seeing this exhibit? in a national design museum as opposed to in an art museum, a photography museum. And I guess for the Cooper Hewitt, why why this exhibit? Why are these photographs I mean, I love the exhibit, but I'm just saying why for you was it important to show this collection uh in a design museum? >> First of all, I I I want to say that it's this is you might be able to speak to this. You're like, I don't want to speak anymore. Um, it is such an honor to speak to to be at a design museum given my architecture background because because like we love design and so that's the way we see the world and so these photographs are a way to get people not only appreciated appreciative for the things that they wear and that are around us but also the role of right design. >> Yeah. I mean like you would not you are a designer like you would not have made the pictures this way if you weren't a designer. Um so even yeah like even if it's a photograph it's also a design. >> Um but I do I mean I I think that it's an interesting question because now it's like how would people interpret these photographs differently if they were being shown in a different kind of museum? like I don't think we can know, but I do think that they probably would be interpreted differently just even the way that we were kind of like tossing back different ways that you could interpret the individual photos. So yeah, you put this in like you know what is it the Museum of American History in Washington DC and maybe they seem a little more rahrh you put them here it's like about what is being made like people that are making things. I mean, yeah, there are other ways. >> The great thing about this museum is that there's there's all these underlying like levels of interpretation that are design. It's it's everything. It's design. It's the intersection of all these things that I love. Yeah. If we showed it at at a American history museum, it would be they'd be interpreted as historical documents. If you showed it in a a gallery with a white wall, they would want the we'd want to show things that are more abstract, you know, and to hang as like objects. But to me, it's it's always been less about what what you're looking at and what what am I what's the story I'm trying to tell. And it's very easy to see things these days is superficial because you're just scrolling and it's just, you know, it's like something to look at and go, you know, ah, look at that. And then forget about it. But there's so much intention to this subject matter that that's what's great about this museum is because there's all these layers of meaning and it's all sort of centered on on good design. Yeah. >> Right. Thank you very much everyone. >> Thank you.