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Atowboat Pushing Barge-Loads Offuel Approaches Loading Piers at The A towboat pushing barge-loads of fuel approaches loading piers at the former Pittsburgh BulkPlant on Herrs Island, 1948. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Bridge is in the foreground, with the 31st Bridge beyond. 148 Pittsburgh History,Winter 1994/95 APRIL 1948, photographer Todd Webb came to Pittsburgh phers produced pictures of immense diversity, despite their on assignment to take pictures of the "smoky city"shortly mandate to simply document an industry. (Stryker would also before work began onPittsburgh's post-war urban renewal, direct, inlater years, an important photojournalism project Renaissance I.Anaccomplished photographer, Webb led an exclusively about the Pittsburgh Renaissance.) artistic double life. His documentary photography supported Stryker directed photographic projects, but he was not a what he called his real work, art photography. With the eye of photographer. He began his career as an economics teacher at INan artist, he captured the charm and character of the city. Columbia University, where he became an early advocate of visual Webb spent AprilinPittsburgh taking pictures for a Standard images as educational tools. Standard Oil tempted him witha Oilof NewJersey project, part ofthe company's ambitious public generous budget so he could hire the best photographers in the relations campaign to document the role of oil inindustrial society. country. He was able to give them unlimited supplies offilmat a He was one of a team ofprofessional photographers who travelled time when filmwas rather scarce, and carte blanche to document all over the United States and other countries taking thousands of industrial America as they saw it.Besides Webb, some of the other pictures for "Jersey Standard." photographers involved were Charlotte Brooks, Harold Corsini, Photographic historian Beaumont Newhall once called Webb John Collier,Lisette Model, Gordon Parks, and John Vashon. a "historian witha camera," and many of Webb's 53 images Between 1943 and 1950, the photographers produced a exhibited at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania remarkable 70,000 pictures, the largest such project ever funded by documented the changing face ofPittsburgh after World War II. a private corporation. However, after seven years, company The show, titled "LookingBack: the Pittsburgh Landscape April executives grew tired of the expensive undertaking, particularly 1948," ran June 2 to September 30, 1994. since there was no way to measure the benefits to the company's The story of Webb's involvement in the project is part ofan name. When the project shut down, allof the photographs are interesting chapter were deposited at the University of Louisville's University Ar- inStandard Oil's chives. corporate history. Todd Webb was strongly influenced by his teachers Arthur The company Siegel and Ansel Adams. He was close friends withStryker, funded the massive photographer AlfredStieglitz, and painter Georgia O'Keefe. He photographic shoot knew many of the post-war photographic luminaries, including as part of a cam- Edward Steichen and Cartier-Bresson. paign to improve its Born in1905 inDetroit, Webb spent his life workingand image, which, in livinginNew York,Paris, London, and Santa Fe. Exhibitions of his 1942, was that of a work were mounted inAmerica and Europe, and several books of corporation with a his photographs were published. To support his career inart poor sense of civicresponsibility. This reputation hit an all-time photography, he established himself as a commercial photogra- low when the U.S. Justice Department accused Standard Oilof pher, working onassingment for Fortune, Life, and other popular precipitating the synthetic rubber shortage during World War II.In magazines. 1943, after a series of widelypublicized hearings inwhich the Duringhis 1948 Pittsburgh assignment, Webb took 115 government was unable to prove its case against Standard Oil,the pictures. Typically, project photographers sent the unprocessed company hired a Madison Avenue firmto help itretreat from its film to the home office tobe developed, and they rarely saw the long-standing reputation as the quintessential corporate behe- prints. When Webb and his wife,Lucille,both 88 years old, came moth. to Pittsburgh from their retirement home inMaine for the opening The public relations firmtheorized that worldwide distribu- of the exhibit at the Historical Society, they saw his Pittsburgh tionofhundreds of outstanding photographs credited to Standard pictures for the first time.Most of Webb's Pittsburgh photos were Oilof NewJersey (made available free for public and commercial never published and none were shown inPittsburgh. use) would create a positive association between superb images of Withits run completed at the Historical Society, the Todd America and the integrity of the company name. This was an early Webb exhibit willtravel to other galleries inthe area. Watch for example ofimage advertising used to influence public opinion. announcements inthe Society's newsletter, MakingHistory. 0 To direct the project, the company hired Roy Stryker, the best visual documentary consultant inthe country. He was best known ForFurther Reading for his work withthe celebrated U.S. Farm Security Administration Todd Webb, Gold Strikes and Ghost Towns (Garden City,N.J., 1961). Webb, to Oregon (Garden 1963). photographic project of the 1930s. That project, which document- Todd The GoldRush and the Road City,N.J., Todd Webb, Todd Webb, Photographs: Early Western Trails and Some Ghost Towns (Ft. ed the agency's work, was administered by Assistant Secretary of Worth, Tex., 1979). Agriculture Rexford Tugwell, Stryker's former teacher and KeithF. Davis,Todd Webb, Photographs of New York and Paris, 1945-1960 (Kansas City mentor. Stryker's Standard Oilcollection is more industrial, more and Albuquerque, 1987). Webb, optimistic and probably less familiar than those haunting images Todd Georgia O'Keefe: the Artist's Landscape /Photographs by Todd Webb (Pasadena, of Ca., 1987). of hunger and hardship American farm families inthe Depression The Highway as Habitat: A Roy Stryker Documentation, 1943-1955, exhibition catalog, Era. But under Stryker's guidance, Webb and the other photogra- University Art Museum, Santa Barbara, Ca., 1986. 149 A Closer Look at Looking Back.
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