"So you sorta have this wonderful core of residential areas in this city that allowed the middle class to not have to flee. The single biggest reason that cities fail is that the middle class leaves them. In Bethlehem, the middle class never left. They just moved around a little bit, and the biggest thing for us is we were able to retain the middle class right in our downtown....
We have low-income individuals in this city, but we have very nice, scattered low-income housing. Uh, our public housing authority’s been around since 1930. And we have public housing projects in the city. Uh, but they’re sort of geographically spaced. They’re not on the main drags. It’s not that we’re hiding them away, but they’re just well planned. There’s one on the west side, there’s one in the north east, there’s a couple in the south side. So it’s not like we’ve said oh we’re just gonna put all our low-income individuals in this one neighborhood...
The fact that Steel kept this city kinda together and allowed the middle class to stay here, allowed the executives to stay here, they didn’t have to flee to the suburbs like Allentown where Mack Trucks... where the executives kind of left and went out to various parts of the region. That didn’t have to happen here. Steel was probably a big part of that."
Quoted from Tony Hanna
++++
I am currently in Western Mass, feeling a bit like a lichen or a big, stagnant rock. I have been out of Bethlehem since last Tuesday, so it's been roughly nine days now. I have the distinct feeling that I was laid off at the coffee shop. Not because I didn't go (because I always came to work) but because nobody else came to work while I worked. No customers. Dead. Dead, dry and unproductive. So this has been an extended vacation in the company of old and new friends between Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
My patience for Bethlehem has dwindled over the past few weeks. Yesterday, I went back and read my original division three preliminary proposal. The writing sounds ludicrously academic yet somewhat feasible as a final project. However, the proposal conceals any premonition of real human contact or influence... Reading it now, I feel nauseous about the over-exaggerated language and the over-simplified methods and goals. I'll let it speak for itself:
In this division three, I will engage the changing face of labor, social mobility, social capital, and identity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In considering the city's change from steel production to the imposition of a casino culture, how does this shift influence community dynamics and the sense of self? How does this relate to larger themes of meritocracy, the fail of late capitalism, power, the American Dream, and the current financial crisis? Using ethnographic techniques, interviews, historical documentation, and research, I hope to analyze the fall of a sustainable industry that once reflected the ideals of production and capitalism while considering the imposition of new social, cultural, and economic implications of the casino. Continually, I will photographically explore Bethlehem, specifically the monolithic remains of Bethlehem Steel. The images will concern the transformation of space over time and the constantly changing meanings people ascribe to previously inhabited and now abandoned areas. I hope to photograph Bethlehem Steel in a way that challenges the viewer to reexamine a space that, at one point, was a factory of time, labor, sweat, and sometimes death. In romanticizing these spaces, I would like to understand how we might use beauty as a coping mechanism in both dealing with past toils and reconciling present strife in economic and social modernity. I hope to photograph allegories within Bethlehem Steel that convey a quiet solitude or innate aesthetic that partially masks but ultimately recreates a historical context while also exploring themes of loss, displacement and identity.
With that being said, I will head back to Bethlehem tomorrow. I've recently felt as though my work has been empty and unproductive; anyone who has been within a ten foot radius of me during the last month has heard me blow steam about it. I like to think that I am good at being comfortable in most living situations. I knew living in Bethlehem would be difficult and taxing on my ability to live through a relatively solitary summer. But I thought I'd manage. Turns out, I have lately felt so remarkably uncomfortable in the town, and I am upset with myself for believing this to be a total failure. Which it is not. I truly have done more work than I think. My time line was just slightly different than originally anticipated. So I might leave mid-month and retire back here, to the Pioneer Valley, where I can and will make sense of the work I've done. Which is fine. There will always be opportunities to come back to Bethlehem.
We have low-income individuals in this city, but we have very nice, scattered low-income housing. Uh, our public housing authority’s been around since 1930. And we have public housing projects in the city. Uh, but they’re sort of geographically spaced. They’re not on the main drags. It’s not that we’re hiding them away, but they’re just well planned. There’s one on the west side, there’s one in the north east, there’s a couple in the south side. So it’s not like we’ve said oh we’re just gonna put all our low-income individuals in this one neighborhood...
The fact that Steel kept this city kinda together and allowed the middle class to stay here, allowed the executives to stay here, they didn’t have to flee to the suburbs like Allentown where Mack Trucks... where the executives kind of left and went out to various parts of the region. That didn’t have to happen here. Steel was probably a big part of that."
Quoted from Tony Hanna
++++
I am currently in Western Mass, feeling a bit like a lichen or a big, stagnant rock. I have been out of Bethlehem since last Tuesday, so it's been roughly nine days now. I have the distinct feeling that I was laid off at the coffee shop. Not because I didn't go (because I always came to work) but because nobody else came to work while I worked. No customers. Dead. Dead, dry and unproductive. So this has been an extended vacation in the company of old and new friends between Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
My patience for Bethlehem has dwindled over the past few weeks. Yesterday, I went back and read my original division three preliminary proposal. The writing sounds ludicrously academic yet somewhat feasible as a final project. However, the proposal conceals any premonition of real human contact or influence... Reading it now, I feel nauseous about the over-exaggerated language and the over-simplified methods and goals. I'll let it speak for itself:
In this division three, I will engage the changing face of labor, social mobility, social capital, and identity in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In considering the city's change from steel production to the imposition of a casino culture, how does this shift influence community dynamics and the sense of self? How does this relate to larger themes of meritocracy, the fail of late capitalism, power, the American Dream, and the current financial crisis? Using ethnographic techniques, interviews, historical documentation, and research, I hope to analyze the fall of a sustainable industry that once reflected the ideals of production and capitalism while considering the imposition of new social, cultural, and economic implications of the casino. Continually, I will photographically explore Bethlehem, specifically the monolithic remains of Bethlehem Steel. The images will concern the transformation of space over time and the constantly changing meanings people ascribe to previously inhabited and now abandoned areas. I hope to photograph Bethlehem Steel in a way that challenges the viewer to reexamine a space that, at one point, was a factory of time, labor, sweat, and sometimes death. In romanticizing these spaces, I would like to understand how we might use beauty as a coping mechanism in both dealing with past toils and reconciling present strife in economic and social modernity. I hope to photograph allegories within Bethlehem Steel that convey a quiet solitude or innate aesthetic that partially masks but ultimately recreates a historical context while also exploring themes of loss, displacement and identity.
With that being said, I will head back to Bethlehem tomorrow. I've recently felt as though my work has been empty and unproductive; anyone who has been within a ten foot radius of me during the last month has heard me blow steam about it. I like to think that I am good at being comfortable in most living situations. I knew living in Bethlehem would be difficult and taxing on my ability to live through a relatively solitary summer. But I thought I'd manage. Turns out, I have lately felt so remarkably uncomfortable in the town, and I am upset with myself for believing this to be a total failure. Which it is not. I truly have done more work than I think. My time line was just slightly different than originally anticipated. So I might leave mid-month and retire back here, to the Pioneer Valley, where I can and will make sense of the work I've done. Which is fine. There will always be opportunities to come back to Bethlehem.
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