Vulcan’s Forge, by Janine Wiedel
Bluecoat Press, £40

IN 1977, Janine Wiedel set out in her VW campervan to photograph industry in England’s West Midlands – once the heart of the Industrial Revolution. A region that was home to thousands of businesses – from iron and steelworks to engineering workshops and potteries, jewellers and coal mines – but then already in steep decline. Underinvestment in both premises and machinery over many decades, combined with government indifference, had left the area depressed and its industries in a terminal state.
 
Vulcan’s Forge is a beautiful monograph documenting the area and its people in over 150 pages of tri-tone printed photographs. It is divided into sections on each industry — The Forge, Jewellery Quarter, The Potteries and Chain-making — with extended captions and background information on each location.

This project, which took Wiedel two years to complete, was begun when she won a bursary from the West Midlands Arts Association, the first to be given to a photographer. Before the West Midlands project, she had already published two books and held exhibitions, one on Irish tinkers and the other on the Inuit people of Baffin Island. 

All three subjects represent marginalised communities.