J.M. Giordano, Photojournalist

Program: Joe Giordano will present on SHUTTERED: Images from the Fall of Bethlehem Steel, currently on view at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. From 1887 to 2012, the Bethlehem Steel mill at Sparrows Point provided steady if dangerous work for tens of thousands of men and women. With the shuttering of the Point’s blast furnaces, the world inhabited by local steel workers took a number of hits, and the effects continue to reverberate today. The grandson of a steel worker, award-winning photojournalist J.M. Giordano has spent more than 15 years capturing the impact of the mill’s decline and closure on his hometown of Baltimore. What do you do, Giordano asks, when the only lifestyle you’ve ever known—an industrial lifestyle passed down by family, friends, and coworkers for generations—becomes obsolete?

Bio: J.M. Giordano is an award-winning photojournalist based in Baltimore and co-host of the photojournalism podcast, 10 Frames Per Second. His work has been featured in Playboy, GQ, The Observer New Review Sunday Magazine, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Washington Post, The Baltimore City Paper, i-D Magazine, Discovery Channel Inc., Rolling-Stone, XLR8R. His work, from the Struggle series is in the permanent collections at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and the Reginald Lewis Museum. In 2015 he was short-listed for the National Gallery's Outwin Boochever Portrait Prize.