Bethlehem Steel

Last week, in one of those wonderful moments of happenstance, I met a local woman who — we discovered while discussing her photography work — was raised in the same town as my mom and dad. We got to talking about what it was like growing up there, how you really are made up of where you come from, and how the language of the place filters into conversations like ours and defines things without elaboration.

I wasn’t born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania — but my entire family was — my mom’s family and all of Dad’s, uncles and aunts, cousins. My parents, decades after moving to Connecticut, still called it Home, and for me, sometimes, it feels that way, too. As a child, we spent holidays and summers in Bethlehem, attended family weddings and funerals. Still, today, I can drive around the city without getting lost, find my way back to my grandparents’ houses, the cemeteries, the church where I was baptized and my parents were married.

So I knew, immediately, the location of the photographs in this local woman’s portfolio. The view from the Southside that Walker Evans immortalized (above), the Kraken-like spires of the steel mill rising from the shore of the Lehigh River, the stories-high windows through which I used to watch molten steel flicker and pour as we drove through town.

Like my client, I have always been fascinated by the steel mill. It holds its place in my mind as the beating heart of the city, with its pulsing engines and machines. It was the center through which everything moved: the trains that woke me up at night, my grandfathers working night shifts, my grandmothers keeping house in the shadows of industry, the smell of iron ore on their skin.

If you have been there or lived there, you know that smell. You know the feel of Steel City, its rough-around-the-edges energy and patchwork culture of blue collar workers, religious sects, and immigrants. You know the hills of Southside, the porch-lit Moravian Stars, and you can see the famous steel stacks along the skyline. You see them, even now, as ghosts keeping watch over the casinos and concert venues, the museum dedicated to the long-gone industry that made its city famous.

The woman I met, Linda Cummings, is an artist-photographer with an incredible catalog of work. You can see her collection of Bethlehem, PA images on her website. They’re part of a larger collection of work called Slippages that will be featured in her new book of the same name.

Sleeping on Arch Street

“Our shadows are our histories. We drag them everywhere.” — About Grace, Anthony Doerr