Industrial Sublime

Maurice Broomfield was a humanist photographer of the heroic and sublime - and sometimes surreal - qualities of industry and manufacture. He captured factories and their workforces in an era of rapid transition in the 1950s and 1960s, depicting the remnants of the industrial revolution alongside emerging modern technologies. Taking inspiration from eighteenth-century paintings and modernist photography, he composed pictures meticulously, and with deep empathy for his subjects. This book shows a selection of his most important images alongside contextual material, much of which has never been published before. Broomfield's vision remains relevant, and prompts questions about the legacy of British industry.