Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Canada

Chartierville, Quebec photo by Ed Bacher

Just over the border from Pittsburg, New Hampshire, the terrain drops quickly into a wide plain with Parc national du Mont-Mégantic in the distance.

Parc national du Mont-Mégantic


The same place, viewed from above (via Google Maps). You can see how different the terrain is once you cross the border. New Hampshire (and the Connecticut River watershed) pokes up into Canada just north of the Connecticut Lakes. Quebec's Parc national du Mont-Mégantic is the circular ridge.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Bethlehem Steel

Bethlehem Steel Works.
This image, which is part of the panoramic collection of the Library of Congress, was taken from the north bank of the Lehigh River by William Herman Rau in 1896.

Bethlehem graveyard and steel mill. Pennsylvania.
Walker Evans took this photograph for the Farm Security Administration from a cemetery in South Bethlehem looking north toward the works. (1935, FSI collection of Library of Congress)

Update (9/11/2019): this is what the view likes today (thanks to Google street view):

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (via Google street view)


Bethlehem Steel Corporation, South Bethlehem Works, Along Lehigh River, North of Fourth Street, West of Minsi Trail Bridge, Bethlehem, Northampton County, PA
Jet Lowe took this picture in 1972  1979 for the HABS/HAER project, looking downstream from the north side of the Lehigh River.

Bethlehem Steel is now bankrupt, and stopped operating the Bethlehem works in 1995. Most of the site is now being developed as a casino by the Sands Corporation of Las Vegas.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Howard Kaplan on Jonathan Singer

I'm not normally big on flower photographs, but Jonathan Singer is something else. And Howard Kaplan wrote a wonderful story about him in Vanity Fair: Flower Power

Armed with a digital camera, a decades-old printer, and a jeweler’s tool nicknamed the Gadget, New Jersey podiatrist Jonathan Singer takes pictures of endangered flowers. His extraordinary photographs have impressed Eileen Ford, the Smithsonian, and a Japanese collector with very deep pockets.