In the Land of Brobdingnag, the Armour Plate Bending Press 1917

Joseph Pennell made this lithograph, "In the Land of Brobdingnag, the Armour Plate Bending Press," with black ink on paper, and my first thought is, "wow, so much darkness!" I can almost feel Pennell bearing down on the stone, trying to get it right. The pressure in the litho reminds me of Goya—the figures emerge from the darkness, or rather, the darkness swallows the figures, the men, and the machines. What do we make of all these industrious men in the hellish landscape? They’re practically dwarfed by the armour plate bending press they’re toiling to operate. As a fellow artist, I get it: you’re trying to say something, but you also don’t want to spell it out. I mean, maybe he was thinking about the human cost of progress or the sublime terror of industrialization, but maybe he just liked the way the light hit the machinery! Whatever it was, he managed to pass it on, and now we get to wonder about it.