Carrie Furnace formed part of the vast Homestead Steel Works along the Monongahela River, one of the centers of American steel production. The mills helped make Pittsburgh an industrial powerhouse while employing generations of immigrant and Black workers in an industry marked by dangerous conditions, labor conflict and racial divisions. The Homestead Works closed in 1982. Most of the complex was demolished, but Carrie Furnaces 6 and 7 survived and were preserved as a National Historic Landmark.

I photographed Carrie Furnace in 2008 as part of my continuing interest in large industrial ruins. Standing inside a former steel complex made the scale of the industry tangible in a way statistics never could. Research then shifted my attention from the machinery itself to the generations of immigrant and Black workers whose labor had powered it.