This powerful book documents--in images and words--the unsettling experience of a dozen men and women workers who lost their jobs in the steel mills of Buffalo, New York, and had to fashion new lives for themselves. A stunning collection of revealing narratives that bears witness to wrenching changes in the American economy. Photographs.

"Portraits in Steel is the authors' effort to help explain and to save something of the heritage of a once-vital company and to portray its wide-ranging impact on the local and national community."--BOOK JACKET.

Benjamin Franklin's portraits and colonial printing -- Phillis Wheatley and the durability of the author portrait -- Nationalist portraiture, magazines, and political books -- Picturing the seduction heroine in the U.S -- Gothic portraiture in Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and Ormond

The fourteen paintings reviewed in this study chronicle industrial artist Howard L. Worner's interpretation of the steel industry. By employing ethnographic techniques to his art, Worner contributed much to the understanding of the 'culture of work.' This book will provide students of art education a better understanding of the genre through artistic ethnography and interpretation, as well as an excellent overview of industrial art.

"A collection of photographs and essays focusing on postindustrial landscapes and abandoned buildings in Pennsylvania"--Provided by publisher.