Bethlehem(Steel)
*ongoing series



☆Cyanotypes on Marlboro Ultralight boxes and rolled cigarettes.
☆Cyantypes on paper, toned in tobacco
☆All images printed are stills from camcorder footage from Mamo’s personal archive of camcorder footage from 2016-2018 visits to Johnstown , PA.

Bethlem is a diptych installation of cyanotype prints Marlboro Ultralight boxes and a panel of rolled cigarettes. During my trials producing the print on the right, the tobacco in the cigarettes toned the cyanotype print (much like how black tea would), which echoed the parallel I was making with this work between the degradation of the human body caused by steel labor + the ills of greedy American industry. I saw this as a physical manifestation of the concepts and materials I was engaging with, so I opted to lean into the abstracted image look with both prints.
The name “Bethlehem” coming from Bethlehem Steel being one of the largest steel-producing companies in America that owned and operated the Johnstown mills pictured. My great-grandparents and extended family worked in the mill after immigrating to the United States from Serbia, as did many other family members. The intergenerational trauma from illness associated with steel labor echoes throughout the city as well as does the urban decay, as there were many cases in which steel workers clothing would bring home asbestos to their families and children after returning home from the mill. In 2014 my grandfather passed away form mesothelioma.-- I chose to print on the cigarettes because growing up they were only something I saw  so frequently when visiting family in Pennsylvania, and it looked like everyone smoked there compared to Virginia.
I’m combining the uncanny stature of the dormant mills with the consumerist nature of cigaretees. The Marlboro box, an icon of American consumerism, serves as a symbol of another harmful industry—one that corrupts the ancient ritual of tobacco with harmful additives. Thought not initially inspired by Andy Warhol—who’s family also had  a history in Pennsylvania steel—I chose Marlboro specifically for its instant recognizability, using this iconic consumerist symbol as an invite for viewers to take a look into this small town in PA.
The mills built America, empowered women in the workforce, and fueled progress—but their closure left behind a legacy of poverty and generation illness in the rust belt, a cycle perpetuated by industries that prioritize profit over people. Bethlehem critiques this legacy while also reclaiming it—a celebratioon of the culutre of Johnstown and a tribute to my family. This work interrogates the American steel and tobacco as similarly corrosive industries.
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Installations



progress / trial documentation:



This work draws a parallel between the impacts of the steel industry labor and smoking. The cigarettes evoke this story for me, particularly as someone raised in Virginia, where tobacco culture was something that felt distinctively regional in Pennsylvania, and like a glamorous American novelty to me. Both of my great-grandparents worked in the Johnstown Mill pictured, and in 2014 my grandfather tragically passed from mesothelioma due to asbestos exposure throughout his life. With the Johnstown mill now closed, the town, like many others, bears the scars of industrial collapse. Bethlehem serves as a meditation on this decay, emphasizing how the pervasive nature of American industries—through both labor and consumption— can bring sickness a


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