About this Event
8 E Packer Ave, Bethlehem, PA 18015
https://go.lehigh.edu/payneMADE IN AMERICA, installed on the 6th floor of the Fairchild-Martindale Library, is a photographic celebration of how things are made, honoring the workers who bring craft, passion, and technological savvy to American manufacturing.
For the past ten years, photographer Christopher Payne has embarked on a photographic journey to learn more about American manufacturing and the industries that built this country. He has gained access to a world that continues to thrive but is often hidden from view.
In MADE IN AMERICA, Payne shows us an astonishing range of how things are made, from yarn in a traditional New England textile mill to a rocket made with a giant 3-D printer—and every sort of manufacturing in between. From the tip of a pencil to the sleek lines of a wind turbine, diverse forms of manufacturing—some very small and others incredibly large—are revealed as examples of human ingenuity and often, unexpectedly, as instances of great beauty.
MADE IN AMERICA celebrates the factory not only as a site of innovation, but as a place where, in an increasingly divided society, a diverse group of people—young and old, skilled and unskilled, recent immigrants and veteran employees—still come together to work toward a common goal. These photographs honor the workers who bring craft, passion, and technological savvy to American manufacturing.
Christopher Payne specializes in architectural and industrial photography. Trained as an architect, he is fascinated by design, assembly, and the built form. He is the author of New York’s Forgotten Substations: The Power Behind the Subway; Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals; North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City; and Making Steinway: An American Workplace. His work has been featured in publications around the world, with frequent special presentations by the New York Times Magazine.
Sponsored by The Friends of the Lehigh University Libraries.