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Workers in New York City, 1944-1948 - Photography Archive - The Gordon Parks Foundation

Structural-Steel Company Foreman Directing a Crane, New York, New York, 1946.

As part of the Standard Oil project, Parks produced an extensive series of photographs of workers in New York. The pictures showcase his mastery of direct and honest portraiture, and convey the unique industrial geometry of the period. They frame images of men and women building the city within the dark sweep of its most fundamental elements, elegantly contrasting people with the angles of bridges, beams, and buildings, and emphasizing the rhythmic repetition of concrete pipes and steel girders.