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“Ismet Alkan. Blast Furnace Worker” Wolfgang Staiger The photo journalist, Wolfgang Staiger, has devoted an extensive series to steel production in the Ruhr district. After the closures of many iron and steel works in the 1970s, an unexpected steel boom set in in 1988. At this time, both Ismet Alkan and Alex Buschhoff were working at Hoesch Stahl AG. Staiger showed very different working biographies and leisure time activities for these two people both working for the same company. In 1971, Ismet Alkan was brought to Germany from Anatolia by his father to earn money. He was 15 years old at the time, and was to be trained as a machinist in a new cold rolling mill. But the plant was closed. Ismet took extremely hard physical work at the blast furnace to feed his own relatively young family. Alex Buschhoff is a steel worker or converter man. In the converter, liquid pig-iron is refined into steel by adding aggregate and by the inert gas argon and nitrogen . The procedure is computer-controlled but the quality control is the responsibility of the converter man. Alex Buschhoff is documented here during the night shift, in the control room or during acceptance of a sample. Ismet Alkan represents a typical migrant worker biography that has led to the phenomenon of “underclass”. For migrants almost always worked in the low wage sector of industry. Unlike their German colleagues, they rarely had chances of promotion and further training courses were not planned for most of them. At the same time, the photographs of Ismet Alkan and Alex Buschhoff show that the industry was a place of common work. Since de-industrialization, such places have disappeared more and more, together with the jobs. In their leisure time, the indigenous populations and migrants also mostly went their separate ways. Staiger also documented the various places where his protagonists socialized. Photo journalist, born 1950, lives and works in Essen. |
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