Link o' the day: Milton Rogovin

Lately, I've been making my way through Portraits in Steel, a book that focuses on a dozen steel mill workers from Buffalo and Lackawanna, NY. For each worker, there are three portraits: one taken while working, one taken at home with family members, and a third taken in the home setting roughly ten years or so after the mills closed. At the back of the book are interviews with each subject. They're asked to discuss the photos, their families, their experiences both before and after losing their jobs. It's an engrossing read and sheds a bit of light on the places I've had the chance to visit such as Bethlehem and Atlas Steel.

The photos are similar to the work of Lewis Hine, but where his material tended to border a bit on the side of gimmickry (a symptom of his era), Rogovin's portraits are decidedly more diplomatic and straightforward. At the same time, they're a lot more subtle. They encourage you to study the details more carefully, like how the house is decorated or the ways in which workers and their families have aged.

It's really good stuff.