David Lewis and Steven High
Corporate Wasteland

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The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization

My research agenda begins with a combined book project—traveling exhibit. Rusted and derelict landscapes can be found in virtually every corner of North America. Industrial ruins are memory places for they make us pause, reflect and remember. But remember what and to what end? To answer this question we must go beyond a vague melancholy regret, or smokestack nostalgia. French historian Pierre Nora has observed that memory “fastens on sites” and is by nature multiple and subjective. If memory places bind people and communities together, and are symbolic in nature, then these abandoned mills and factories unite displaced workers in a memory community of “anger and sorrow.” These physical vestiges even become symbolic sites of identity for those workers who have come to identify with their displacement.

To explore the landscape and memory of deindustrialization, Corporate Wasteland draws together the oral history interviews conducted by myself and the documentary photography of David Lewis, an internationally acclaimed artist. His use of infra-red film and the bromoil process sets his photographs apart. The stories told by Canadian and American workers tell of the special bond that united long-service industrial workers before the closures, the shock and demoralization that accompanied the news, the efforts to save their jobs, and the uncertain aftermath. The plant shutdown stories included in this book manuscript act as a crucial counter-point to the nostalgia that the photographs may produce. By telling us how mills and factories came to be abandoned, these plant shutdown stories remind us that this was no natural disaster.