Steel Mills 1937

Harry Sternberg created this print of steel mills, layering blacks and grays to make the scene look smoky, imposing, and yes, even kind of scary. I can only imagine what it must have been like to stand there, maybe sketching as fast as he could, trying to capture the enormity of it all. Think of the choices he had to make – where to put the darkest darks, how to suggest the light struggling to break through the pollution, and how to show the sheer scale of the mills without getting lost in all the details. There are so many chimneys and towers, all those pipes and buildings huddled together, like a city made of metal. It reminds me a little bit of Piranesi’s etchings of imaginary prisons, the way the architecture seems to go on forever, maze-like. Ultimately, artists borrow, steal, and riff off of one another. We see this in Sternberg's composition and the way he used light and shadow to create such a dramatic, unsettling effect.