Photographer Stephen Szoradi started his ongoing series on industry and infrastructure as a student at Bennington College in the late 80s. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where “there’s not a single smokestack,” he says. “In Vermont there was a whole blue-collar workforce that I’d never seen.” Szoradi began taking pictures of New England quarries “to understand how things were made….I thought it would be a project I might be able to sustain for the rest of my life.”
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After September 11 his access to public utilities was sharply restricted, so he turned his attention to reservoirs and other less sensitive areas. In the future he hopes to document shipping via land and sea, the timber industry, and power plants, although “timing-wise it’s probably the worst time to start power and electricity,” he says. “Nuclear power plants are not exactly open to being photographed right now.”
