Ken Light

The Rust Belt of America provided the manpower and factories that formed the backbone of American manufacturing, which became a juggernaut of the 20th century. When conditions changed, companies quietly left. Continuing in the decades-long tradition of coverage of Rust Belt communities, American photographer Ken Light (born 1951) turned his lens on this region. The images in this book show the vestiges of the industrial past: abandoned factories, decaying infrastructure and disused machinery. The cities that Light visited are a testament to vanishing economic opportunities. Citizens feel abandoned and angered by the political system and left behind by a business class that offshored the production of goods and forsook them without a second thought. Report to the Shareholders weaves the proud heritage of blue-collar communities into this saga alongside striking historical ephemera that brings the present of the black-and-white images into high relief.

A decade ago, Ken Light (born 1951) traveled across the United States photographing a country that he realized was the most fragile of organisms. The photographs of the earlier years in this book create the context for understanding how America lost its way. Light reached all four corners of the country to document people across race, class and political lines. We see the heartland and the coastal cities, Wall Street and rural small towns.
As he continued, seismic changes erupted across America and the country descended into an age of crisis. He photographed protests and Washington politicians in Congress and the White House, climate change disasters and environmental defenders, the rise of the regime of Donald Trump, the Trump rallies and America’s reactions to it all. He comprehensively probed the fractured social and economic condition, going beyond the tropes of inequality we all recite by heart to create a visual portrait of a country mired in calamity, its people deeply splintered, angry and in pain.
The resulting portrait of the American social landscape is a riveting historical and visual record of a complicated country in a complicated time. It is compelling, and one of the earliest photographic accounts of an age that historians and citizens will be scrutinizing for generations to come.