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Snapshots of Bethlehem Steel
Two former employees collaborating on
collection of photographs of final 25 years.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
By BILL WICHERT
The Express-Times
BETHLEHEM | Sparks bounce off the
steelworker's helmet and body, filling the photograph with a shower of
light.
Unseen beyond this image are the thousands of
other people who toiled and sometimes died on behalf of the country. As
Elizabeth "Bette" Kovach put it, the sweat of these individuals "built,
transported and defended America."
Thirteen years after Bethlehem Steel Corp.
plant in the South Side closed down, Kovach and photographer Peter
Treiber are looking to celebrate these workers and their industry with
"Inside Bethlehem Steel: The Final Quarter Century," a collection of 92
photographs shot by Treiber with text provided by Kovach.
"This is the way it was," Treiber said. "It's
their yearbook."
Instead of the rusted relics now at the
Bethlehem site where the Las Vegas Sands Corp. is building a $630
million-plus casino complex, Treiber and Kovach said they wanted to
illustrate the vibrancy of the facility where they started working about
30 years ago.
Kovach began in the public affairs department
in fall 1976, a few months before Treiber was hired as a staff
advertising photographer. His photographs appeared in trade magazines,
corporate publications and advertisements.
From the South Side to as far away as
Minnesota, the photographs show the mines, shipyards and steelmaking
operations. When the Bethlehem plant closed in 1995, many pieces of
equipment were either demolished or transferred to other facilities,
Kovach said.
While the company began providing employee
tours of the plant in the 1980s, most workers and the public have never
seen the work captured in these photographs, Kovach said.
As the company's fortunes began to decline,
the photographic department was one of the first casualties, closing
down completely by the summer of 1983. Treiber went on to work as a
freelance photographer for the company.
By the time the corporation sold all of its
assets in May 2003, Kovach was the last remaining member of the public
affairs department, which had once included 185 employees.
Reporter Bill Wichert can be reached at
610-867-5000 or by e-mail at bwichert@express-times.com.
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