Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp. of U.S. Steel, South Works, Chicago—Men Tapping an Electric Furnace

U.S. Steel was, and in many ways still is, was an industrial super-power, and these images are testament to its glory. They were taken in the 1940s and ‘50s when the company was in its prime (with more than 35 plants and facilities, and 350,000 workers at its disposal). Innovation and optimism were industrial watchwords of the time.

These images are the fruit of a vast project, conducted and commissioned by U.S. Steel itself, that effectively documents the company’s mind-boggling array operations—it has an incomparable sweep and historical value (and only a small sampling is represented here). Many well-respected lensmen gave their talents to this project, including Russell Aikins, who worked for Fortune magazine, and Fritz Henle who is represented in major museums (and whose works sell for upwards of $5,000). To a man, they rise above their purely documentary commission, incorporating aesthetic elements both dramatic and subtle. Dark latticeworks of coils and scaffolds are framed and cropped against bright skies. Blast furnace towers are pictured from below to take on a monumental grandeur. Not to be missed is the undeniably sculptural presence of many of these vertical behemoths, their quiet merits all the more discernable, in our Postmodern, post-Bernd- and-Hilla-Becher era.