Heavy Metal
Posted: July 12th, 2023, 10:41 am
A Vanished world.
Heavy metal: how Janine Wiedel captured the filth and glory of Britain’s industrial 70s
The Guardian
The photographer travelled the West Midlands in a campervan to document the workers risking their lives to toil in steel mills, coal mines and blast furnaces
I have my own memories from the 1960s. On a school trip I went round, presumably, Bilston when it was still operating. "Health & Safety" What's that? I remember stumbling around the site, nearly treading on a large red hot bar lying on the ground, it suddenly raining bursts of scintillating white hot metal from above, and seeing a blast furnace being tapped.
Later, when I was in hospital for an eye operation in central Birmingham, there was a hot metal explosion of some kind in a local works and people were brought in to the hospital.
Heavy metal: how Janine Wiedel captured the filth and glory of Britain’s industrial 70s
The Guardian
The photographer travelled the West Midlands in a campervan to document the workers risking their lives to toil in steel mills, coal mines and blast furnaces
I have my own memories from the 1960s. On a school trip I went round, presumably, Bilston when it was still operating. "Health & Safety" What's that? I remember stumbling around the site, nearly treading on a large red hot bar lying on the ground, it suddenly raining bursts of scintillating white hot metal from above, and seeing a blast furnace being tapped.
Later, when I was in hospital for an eye operation in central Birmingham, there was a hot metal explosion of some kind in a local works and people were brought in to the hospital.