The OFZ steel mill in Istebné, Slovakia.
Viktor Mácha’s day job is in real estate. But his true passion is his Beauty of Steel Project, in which he is photographing every single steel mill he can get himself into. He has now taken more than 2,400 photographs of over 500 blast furnaces, steel mills, foundries, forges and rolling mills in 28 countries on five continents.
“It was a religious experience.”
It was a personal childhood experience that set him on his path. When he was 14 years old, his parents took him on a trip to the mountains in eastern Czechia, and they passed through the legendary steel town Třinec on the way. “My parents wanted to show me the big industry there,” said Mácha. “They have a blast furnace, a steel plant, everything, and they wanted to show me where all the metal is created. They tried to scare me and show me this is not the way to go, to end up in a steel mill. They were hoping for a better future for me. I stepped out of the car, and across the river was Blast Furnace #6. It was a religious experience. It was literally like standing in front of an unknown god who was talking to me in a language I hadn’t heard before, but I understood it. At that very moment I knew that this was something I needed to be part of.”
A year or two later, he noticed the landscape beginning to change, as Czechia’s blast furnaces and steel mills began closing, along with countless others around the globe. That’s when Mácha began taking his photographs, back in 2008, and he proved to be a natural. “I’ve never read a single book about photography,” he explained, “and I’ve never been to a single workshop.” Yet his work speaks directly to the people closest to the business. “He is a good photographer,” said Steve Jadwisiak, senior business development executive with Trinity Products, a steel plate, pipe and coil manufacturer headquartered in O’Fallon, Missouri. “I think he’s a good portrait artist.”
Viktor Mácha.
Mácha quickly focused on photographing every single steel mill he could, all over the world. In many cases, the plants he took pictures of shut down shortly after he visited. “After those 16 years, the steel industry has changed dramatically,” he said.
He remains almost entirely self-financed, paying his own way for his travel, his equipment, and his own time commitment. To help defray the costs, for several years now he has published and sold his annual Beauty of Steel calendar, and he also sells copies of his prints and images. “I’m not expecting to make a bunch of money from my project,” he explained. “But it was never about the money.”
Beyond the cost, the other difficulty is getting companies to allow him on their plant sites to take photographs. “The biggest challenge is getting permission and convincing the companies I’m not here to steal their technology and sell it to the Chinese,” Mácha said.
The Cleveland-Cliffs fully integrated steel facility in Burn Harbor, Indiana.
As the Beauty of Steel Project has become better known across the industry, his access has improved slightly. But at the same time, as companies have been adding new technologies to become more environmentally friendly, they have also sometimes become less willing to allow Mácha in. That hesitance to take part is a shame, since the project offers several benefits to the steel industry.
Benefits to the steel industry
Industrial art for its own sake
Anna Frounfelker, inside sales representative and social media marketing director at Ferrosource, a global ferrous metals procurement and distribution company, thinks Mácha’s art has immense value. “What he’s doing is important, because he is capturing the raw beauty that is the steelmaking process.”
“The scale of the things he shows is immense,” said Cory Bonnet, a Pittsburgh painter and sculptor who focuses on the steel industry and curates the Patterns of Meaning exhibits. “We should be celebrating those accomplishments even as we work on cleaner, more sustainable ways to do things.”
Coking ovens at the ArcelorMittal plant in Dunkirque, France.
Celebration of manufacturing
To Mácha, that celebration of what steelmakers do is integral to his work. He thinks it’s high time people in the steel industry stop apologizing for their business, and for them to have pride in what they industry has done in the past and for the world today. “You are the ones who forged our civilization,” he said. “Be proud of what you are doing, because without steel there would be no civilization.”
Frounfelker agrees. “I certainly think this industry deserves to be celebrated,” she said. “He reminds me of Norman Rockwell. He’s showing that this is the blue-collar world that we live in, and the people who are making it possible.”
Workforce development
It’s often said that manufacturers are their own worst enemies when it comes to marketing the importance of what they do. Many won’t let any visitors in, for fear of revealing important trade secrets–even though most manufacturers use commercially available processes. Yet keeping people out is hurting manufacturing, preventing potential future workers from seeing what it’s all about.
The blast furnace tuyeres at the ArcelorMittal factory in Monlevade, Brazil.
“I’m here to document and make their plant part of the project, part of the legacy for future generations,” Mácha said. “Everything they see is a gray cloud-making factory on the horizon. If they could be allowed to jump over the fence or go through the gate and see all that magic, all the technology, that would drastically change the point of view of society.”
“He’s bringing a lot of people together,” said Jadwisiak. “I’m learning a lot from this guy, and I think a lot of people are.”
“He is bringing awareness to this industry to the everyday person,” added Frounfelker. “You don’t walk out your door without touching steel. It’s the lifeblood of our industrial economy. If we want to survive, the next generation has to be aware of what we’re doing.”
“You have to know and remember how things were done in the past and preserve that knowledge,” said Bonnet. “That’s how we inspire people to build for the future.”
The Nizhny Tagil Iron & Steel Works in Russia.
Looking ahead
As Raymond Monroe, EVP at the Steel Founders’ Society of America, which works to advance the U.S. steel casting industry, observed, “Our culture has communicated that only artists and programmers and people in service are really creative. But they have misunderstood and thought that people in engineering or manufacturing are in dead-ended, uncreative, dehumanizing environments. But if you’re involved in that, you know that the most creative people are the people in manufacturing, because they have to be creative every day.” One of industry’s greatest challenges today is how to effectively communicate that reality to our youth.
With that in mind, today Mácha is focusing even more intently on reaching our younger generations with his work. “I’ve been lecturing elementary students and using my pictures about the importance of the steel industry and mining, and I’d love for you to see their faces – they’re so excited and surprised about the importance of the steel industry.
“It’s really pure magic, I have no other word for it. It’s like having fireworks many times every day. It’s unbelievable. I wish more people would be able to see this.”
Rolling mills at Zaporizhstal in Zaporozhye, Ukraine.
