The world has a glut of steel at the moment and so prices of slab are low on international markets. This is the second largest blast furnace in europe and one of the most efficient anywhere. Its steel is also regarded as amongst the best worldwide. China is flooding the market with subsidised slab, making Teesside's steel uneconomical and the local industry loss making.
The Teesside steel industry goes back 170 years and has been used in many international landmark structures including many of the worlds great bridges; Sydney Harbour, Auckland Harbour, Tsing Ma Crossing in Hong Kong, Bosphorus crossing, Humber bridge, Thames Darford Crossing and even the worlds first railway was made using Teesside's iron.
This autumn this furnace was shut down by loss making owners SSI, in the quickest and cheapest way possible, guaranteeing it can never be restarted and the end of steel making on Teesside will be permenant. This plant could have been saved but the owners decided on an act of industrial and social grievious bodily harm to save a little money short term. Thousands of people lost and continue to loose their livelihoods and the area is now in terminal decline, with numerous contractors and engineering businesses also laying off thousands more workers. Of course other local businesses and retailers are suffering as a result and the community may never recover.
This portrait of the blast furnace is one of a series I am making in recognition of this catasrophe and in memorial of all those lives lost building and working in this place and the generations who invested their lives in the Teesside steel industry.
With all that said, let me know if it works for you, please.
We have gone through the same thing in the States. Our steel industry in Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Ohio have been gone for two or more decades.
Love the shot. The earth tones and silhouette work really well to emphasis the story.
Hi Ian,
What a sad situation. This captures a feeling of loneliness with the empty beach and earthy tones. I think it makes a good shot for a part of the story. Adding images with some detail of the empty complex would be quite powerful along with this one as a series of images (if you have access to the site -hope so!). A consideration for you might be to look at the images in color and B&W. Sometimes the B&W images are more powerful in telling these stories. Look forward to seeing more...
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thank you very much for your interest and emotional engagement. I don't have access to the site, unfortunately. In fact whilst the story was unfolding and things were looking dire I contacted the arts council and SSI about an idea to make portraits of steelworkers at work, photographically and on video, as a social and cultural artistic historic documentary. The arts council seemed interested in possibly funding it, but would take 3 months to decide and there was no such time frame available. SSI would not allow me access, end of story. A few days later it all started to unravel and the owners people all flew away back to the far east, leaving the local people and the government high and dry, unable to do much at all.
In short, I can't access the site, so my only POVs are from beyond the fence. The site is more than a mile wide and so much is invisible from public access areas beyond the fence The blast furnace, fortunately for me is very close to the fence and there is a semi-public wilderness and effectively public road on that side of the plant, which is where I shot this photograph from, although obviously I pulled back quite some distance, perhapse a mile and a half, I guess.
Although the steel industry in this part of the world was establicshed during the industrial revolution this site was established in 1976 and I took holiday work there as an industrial painter, to earn the money needed to buy a camera to take with me to college, I studied Photography. I worked 11 weeks on the roof girders of the tallest sheds, 150 ft above the grouund, with no harness or other lifesaving safety equipment, and every week, after the first week at least one person was killed on this site. So to me the blast furnace is a monument to the many many lives lost building the site and across the whole of the Teesside steel industry's long history.
Ian.
It's to bad the site is off limits. I had a thought as I read your reply. The effect of the mill closing on the local community is quite a story to capture. I know that work is very taxing emotionally. Such a portfolio is much more documentary in its nature but a worthy project to be captured. I don't mean to make any pretext that you should shoot it, but there is a story unfolding there. Having been a part of that story would give you insights that an outsider would find difficult to see.
Sincerely,
Mike
Thank you. I am doing a basic set of landscape photographs as you have seen but the people at work as originally mooted and shots from within the now closed site would be so much more compelling. We'll see.