Patterns In Ammonia 1948

Kent Hagerman made this etching, called 'Patterns In Ammonia,' using a painstaking method of scratching lines into a metal plate. I love how he's managed to create a complex industrial scene using a monochromatic palette. Look at the density of lines that build up the forms of the ammonia tanks and the factory behind. Can you imagine the artist bent over his plate, carefully etching each line, building up the image bit by bit? There is a real sense of industry. Those plumes of smoke rising into the sky contrast with the dark, almost claustrophobic scene below. And the figures on the ground – are they workers, dwarfed by the scale of the machinery? Hagerman is really talking to the industrial revolution, and the place of human beings within these great feats of engineering. He manages to find a strange beauty in this scene. Like other artists across time, Hagerman encourages us to pause and reflect, using his own creative processes to find meaning.