Industrial Photography: A Visual History of Work
“It is not right to take a close-up look at these architectures, with all their typically exuberant features, and think one can understand the whole by examining the details.” Thus wrote the architect Giuliano Guiducci in an article published in Pirelli magazine in 1961. The article bore an evocative title – “Fabbriche come monumenti“ (Factories as Monuments) – and examined the peculiarity and complexities of production facilities. Guiducci’s words clearly convey the challenge of industrial photography, which, by “starting from the details”, needs to capture the diverse mix of people, machines, architectural spaces, and the know-how that defines these places. A challenge that is by no means insignificant, even for the greatest photographers.
Industrial photography began to take shape in Italy towards the end of the nineteenth century, accompanying developments in the national manufacturing sector. It emerged both as a distinct photographic genre, with recurring themes and subjects, and as a meta-genre that also included others, such as architecture, portraiture, reportage, and still lifes. The key feature of this particular art form is therefore not primarily its imagery, but the relationship and mediation between the photographer’s sensitivity and style and the company’s communication needs. The company needs to convey its ideological, social, and cultural values to the outside world, thereby creating its own recognisable identity.
From the outset, Pirelli opened its factories to artists, allowing them to document the production processes that turned rubber into tyres, cable sheathings, transmission belts, game balls, capes, and so on. The 1922 photographic shoot inside the Bicocca departments, to celebrate the Group’s 50th anniversary, captures the different “spirits” of the factory: The photographer focuses in particular on the machinery used for the various production cycles – mixers, calenders, and rolling mills – as well as on the spaces, such as the raw materials warehouse and the vulcanisation area. Great emphasis is naturally given to the workers, with shots that show their skill and the adeptness of their hands at work. Stories of the factories also appear in artistic images that illustrate the evolution of industrial photography, reflecting the social and aesthetic changes of the time. These range from the static settings of early twentieth-century photographs, with the workers posing in front of the lens – as we see in Luca Comerio’s Workers Leaving the Pirelli Factory in Via Ponte Seveso of 1905, a tribute to the manufacturing power achieved by the company – to the more expressionist pictures by John Deakin dated 1961. The English artist was a friend and collaborator of Francis Bacon and was famous for his crude street scenes and fashion reports for Vogue. In the early 1960s, he worked in Milan, Rome and especially in Genoa, where he explored the world of industry, photographing the foundries and steelworks of the Italsider iron and steel group. The shots he took in the Bicocca plant bring out the most human aspects of the factory. His psychological investigations, penetrating portraits and the heroic relationship between man and work all emerge in his dramatic black-and-white views, revealing great technical mastery.
Photography has always played an extremely important role in Pirelli’s communication policies, also in terms of its house organs: as well as showcasing the company’s modernity and technological advancements, the illustrations tell a story of the age, portraying post-war Italy as it was brought back to life by its industry, the driving force behind the economic boom of that era. Many auteur reportages were made inside the factories and published in Pirelli magazine: the Tolmezzo paper mill, which became part of the Group in 1953, focused on the production of cellulose for rayon. It was the focus of an exceptionally elegant photo shoot by Fulvio Roiter, who explored the premises of one of Italy’s most important industrial paper production complexes, from the wood warehouse to the purification plants and the workshops used for collecting the reels. Ugo Mulas put his name to some of the photographs that accompany the extensive investigation into women’s work in Italy that ran in three issues of the periodical in 1963. His images capture workers on the job at the Superga shoe factory in Triggiano, the garment factory in Arona, and the factory in Arco Felice, which produced submarine electricity cables. It was the “Long P” factory in Campania that took centre stage in the 1964 photoshoot by Horst H. Baumann. In it, he documented the construction phases of the Sacoi cable, which was designed to transport energy from the Sulcis thermoelectric power plant to mainland Italy. His photographs, which are notable for their powerful visual impact, include images of the cable being wound, coil after coil, in a large accumulation tank for the vacuum treatment that would give the cable its necessary electrical properties. The following year, this grand project led to the plant being awarded the prize of the National Association of Italian Engineers and Architects (ANIAI) for the best electronic engineering achievement in Italy. In the late 1960s Arno Hammacher visited the interiors of the Solari company in Udine, a Pirelli subsidiary at the height of its fame for international supplies of flip clocks and alphanumeric teleindicators. Springs and wheels, palettes and rollers: the focus was entirely on the components required to move the hours and minutes in the iconic Cifra 3 clock. About ten years earlier, the Dutch photographer had also put his name to the back covers of the magazine, with black-and-white close-ups of the production lines at the Milano Bicocca factory. These images ranged from materials such as metal braids, bales of raw rubber ready for lamination, spools of copper wire and machinery, including stranding machines in operation, and products such as telecommunications cables, as well as tyres fresh out of the vulcanisation mould.
The tradition of photographers in factories continues to this day with internationally renowned artists called upon to work with the company. Carlo Furgeri Gilbert has done photoshoots at the Group’s factories in Italy and around the world, from Bollate to Settimo Torinese, to Breuberg and Izmit, through to Slatina. The Pirelli Industrial Centre on the outskirts of Turin was documented by Peter Lindbergh in 2016, as part of the project that led to the creation of the Pirelli Calendar the following year, and with photos of Alessandro Scotti, which bring to an end the 2021 Annual Report. In a blend of documentation and expression, these powerful and evocative images capture the poetry of symbolic places of work. They reflect the humility and freedom of the photographers’ eyes, as they observe “the movements of men and machines as if watching a ritual“.
“It is not right to take a close-up look at these architectures, with all their typically exuberant features, and think one can understand the whole by examining the details.” Thus wrote the architect Giuliano Guiducci in an article published in Pirelli magazine in 1961. The article bore an evocative title – “Fabbriche come monumenti“ (Factories as Monuments) – and examined the peculiarity and complexities of production facilities. Guiducci’s words clearly convey the challenge of industrial photography, which, by “starting from the details”, needs to capture the diverse mix of people, machines, architectural spaces, and the know-how that defines these places. A challenge that is by no means insignificant, even for the greatest photographers.
Industrial photography began to take shape in Italy towards the end of the nineteenth century, accompanying developments in the national manufacturing sector. It emerged both as a distinct photographic genre, with recurring themes and subjects, and as a meta-genre that also included others, such as architecture, portraiture, reportage, and still lifes. The key feature of this particular art form is therefore not primarily its imagery, but the relationship and mediation between the photographer’s sensitivity and style and the company’s communication needs. The company needs to convey its ideological, social, and cultural values to the outside world, thereby creating its own recognisable identity.
From the outset, Pirelli opened its factories to artists, allowing them to document the production processes that turned rubber into tyres, cable sheathings, transmission belts, game balls, capes, and so on. The 1922 photographic shoot inside the Bicocca departments, to celebrate the Group’s 50th anniversary, captures the different “spirits” of the factory: The photographer focuses in particular on the machinery used for the various production cycles – mixers, calenders, and rolling mills – as well as on the spaces, such as the raw materials warehouse and the vulcanisation area. Great emphasis is naturally given to the workers, with shots that show their skill and the adeptness of their hands at work. Stories of the factories also appear in artistic images that illustrate the evolution of industrial photography, reflecting the social and aesthetic changes of the time. These range from the static settings of early twentieth-century photographs, with the workers posing in front of the lens – as we see in Luca Comerio’s Workers Leaving the Pirelli Factory in Via Ponte Seveso of 1905, a tribute to the manufacturing power achieved by the company – to the more expressionist pictures by John Deakin dated 1961. The English artist was a friend and collaborator of Francis Bacon and was famous for his crude street scenes and fashion reports for Vogue. In the early 1960s, he worked in Milan, Rome and especially in Genoa, where he explored the world of industry, photographing the foundries and steelworks of the Italsider iron and steel group. The shots he took in the Bicocca plant bring out the most human aspects of the factory. His psychological investigations, penetrating portraits and the heroic relationship between man and work all emerge in his dramatic black-and-white views, revealing great technical mastery.
Photography has always played an extremely important role in Pirelli’s communication policies, also in terms of its house organs: as well as showcasing the company’s modernity and technological advancements, the illustrations tell a story of the age, portraying post-war Italy as it was brought back to life by its industry, the driving force behind the economic boom of that era. Many auteur reportages were made inside the factories and published in Pirelli magazine: the Tolmezzo paper mill, which became part of the Group in 1953, focused on the production of cellulose for rayon. It was the focus of an exceptionally elegant photo shoot by Fulvio Roiter, who explored the premises of one of Italy’s most important industrial paper production complexes, from the wood warehouse to the purification plants and the workshops used for collecting the reels. Ugo Mulas put his name to some of the photographs that accompany the extensive investigation into women’s work in Italy that ran in three issues of the periodical in 1963. His images capture workers on the job at the Superga shoe factory in Triggiano, the garment factory in Arona, and the factory in Arco Felice, which produced submarine electricity cables. It was the “Long P” factory in Campania that took centre stage in the 1964 photoshoot by Horst H. Baumann. In it, he documented the construction phases of the Sacoi cable, which was designed to transport energy from the Sulcis thermoelectric power plant to mainland Italy. His photographs, which are notable for their powerful visual impact, include images of the cable being wound, coil after coil, in a large accumulation tank for the vacuum treatment that would give the cable its necessary electrical properties. The following year, this grand project led to the plant being awarded the prize of the National Association of Italian Engineers and Architects (ANIAI) for the best electronic engineering achievement in Italy. In the late 1960s Arno Hammacher visited the interiors of the Solari company in Udine, a Pirelli subsidiary at the height of its fame for international supplies of flip clocks and alphanumeric teleindicators. Springs and wheels, palettes and rollers: the focus was entirely on the components required to move the hours and minutes in the iconic Cifra 3 clock. About ten years earlier, the Dutch photographer had also put his name to the back covers of the magazine, with black-and-white close-ups of the production lines at the Milano Bicocca factory. These images ranged from materials such as metal braids, bales of raw rubber ready for lamination, spools of copper wire and machinery, including stranding machines in operation, and products such as telecommunications cables, as well as tyres fresh out of the vulcanisation mould.
The tradition of photographers in factories continues to this day with internationally renowned artists called upon to work with the company. Carlo Furgeri Gilbert has done photoshoots at the Group’s factories in Italy and around the world, from Bollate to Settimo Torinese, to Breuberg and Izmit, through to Slatina. The Pirelli Industrial Centre on the outskirts of Turin was documented by Peter Lindbergh in 2016, as part of the project that led to the creation of the Pirelli Calendar the following year, and with photos of Alessandro Scotti, which bring to an end the 2021 Annual Report. In a blend of documentation and expression, these powerful and evocative images capture the poetry of symbolic places of work. They reflect the humility and freedom of the photographers’ eyes, as they observe “the movements of men and machines as if watching a ritual“.
