Five B&W photos Baltimore/Milwaukee by Howard Mettee c.1920s-30s

Nice set of five photos, three soft-focus, showing 1920s/30s industrial and local life in Baltimore MD and Milwaukee WI.

I believe these are more modern reprints, probably from the original negatives. The address on the back of the photos was active in the 1960s-70s.

1. Photo of rail yard, with industrial complex in the background, spewing smoke
2. Photo of railway tracks, with locomotive travelling along it, with industrial complex in the background, spewing smoke
3. Photo of man traveling along road on horse-drawn wagon, in background industrial complex, spewing smoke. Nice juxtaposition of the old and new!
4. Photo taken from inside roadway tunnel. Looking toward entrance of tunnel, see line of parked cars (Fords?), crowd of people on sidewalk, a few cars moving along road, and in background a large building under construction.
5. Photo with sidewalk view of the backs of nicely dressed women, one with a young girl. Some cars on the street. Sign for T.A. Chapman Co. on right side. Located on Milwaukee St. and Wisconsin Ave in Milwaukee WI.

All are stamped on back ‘METTEE PHOTOGRAPHY 3520 WILKENS AVE. BALTIMORE, MD 21229’.

As well, each photo has a unique identifier written along with stamp. In order: ‘L38’, ‘L37’, ‘L30’, ‘L62’, and ‘L48’.

#1 has LR corner folded. #4 has LL corner crease.

10” x 8 ⅛” or inverted on a couple.

(Red text is an electronic watermark that is not physically part of the photo for sale)

Beginning in the 1920s, industry—and all that it stood for—captivated American photographers. Heroic images of workers and machinery embodied the ethos of a nation transformed. Productivity equalled prosperity and photographers made pictures for both personal artistic expression and advertising, and for the glossy pages of magazines like Fortune and Life. No medium could better record the art of industry than the photograph—its very creation a product of man and machine.

The 1920s and 30s marked the pinnacle of the machine age in America. Pictures of smoke and steam, silhouetted by humble hard-working laborers, made for images that were both romantic and dramatic. The new vision with its jazzy compositions, along with cool, clean and precise abstractions, pulsed toward a new modernist aesthetic.

Factory automation, modern transportation and the assembly line were all factors that fuelled the growth of America as an industrial society. In the world of photography, advertising and industry was a rapidly expanding career option. Photographers were inspired by numerous exhibitions that presented commercial photography as an art form. 

The Industrial landscape, with its interplay of geometric architectural shapes, is a recurring theme in photography from the mid-1920s through the 1940s. In 1925, a Baltimore photographer, Holmes Mettee, made soft-focus otherworldly landscapes out of a bustling industrial site.

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