Images by Yanika Anukulpun

Keith de Lellis Gallery presents a solo exhibition of 1930s industrial photography by Harold Haliday Costain, one of the leading American modernist photographers of his generation.

Harold Haliday Costain (1897 – 1994) had a thriving commercial studio in Scarsdale, New York when he produced some of his finest work photographing the inner workings of the sugar and salt industries. His dramatic and precisionist images of mines, factories, and warehouses were commissioned as publicity for the international Salt Company and the National Sugar Refining Company.

In 1934, his work for International Salt took him to the mines of Avery Island, where he photographed the mining and processing of rock salt into table salt. His studies of drilling and blasting made for glorious illustrations of heroic miner illuminated against the cavernous crystalline walls aglow with the photographer’s strategically placed artificial light.

During the depression, the image of the American worker and workplace became a staple for the media and big businesses who exploited photography as a restorative antidote against the public’s waning faith in national economic stability. Fortune Magazine played a significant role in this effort. Its lavish monthly publication was filled with beautiful photographs illustrating stories of a bustling American commerce. Costain’s pictures of the salt mines were featured in the November 1934 issue of Fortune in an article tiltle “ Salt of the Island,,, Oldest and most romantic of U.S. salt mines is the Avery, deep under the sea along the coast of Louisiana.”

In a 1935 memo to the photographer, the National Sugar Refining Company stressed the importance of promoting an image of purity and cleanliness in all its advertising and publicity. The instructions to Costain were to “portray a plant which is spick and span in every respect and workers which are in clean clothing... all workers should be in white coats. This atmosphere is particularly important because we are showing the place where an essential food is produced” .

Costain took the request to heart, making images of immaculate factory interiors, pristine in every way and lit so that every element would come alive. He thusly photographed the sugar operations of the Jack Frost Company in Long Island City, and its Edgewater, New Jersey plant. His pictures of workers at conveyor belts and managers weighing sugar sacks are treated with equal reverence in the solemn and efficiently run factories.

Keith De Lellis Gallery

November 29th, 2018 - January 26th, 2019

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 5 pm

41 E 57th Street, Suite 703, New York, New York 10022

For more information, click here.