The Rouge

Michael Kenna crafts an eloquent eulogy for the industrial age in 50 photographs of the Ford Motor Company's Rouge River plant near Detroit. His dramatic sense of light and shadow gives these photos hallucinatory beauty; smoke and fumes curling from smokestacks are as evocative as fog shrouding the bridges of Paris or Prague. Kenna brings a romantic, even pastoral sensibility to architectural history, particularly to landmarks that are on the verge of redemption or extinction. Introduction and captions by Ford historian Lee R. Kollins explain the auto manufacturing process with engrossing precision.