Viktor Mácha works mainly in real estate, but his true passion is his project “Beauty of Steel”, where he photographs every steelworks he can reach. He has now taken over 2,400 photographs of over 500 blast furnaces, steelworks, foundries, forges and rolling mills in 28 countries on five continents.

“It was a religious experience.”

It was a personal childhood experience that set him on his path. When he was 14, his parents took him on a trip to the mountains of eastern Bohemia, and on the way they passed through the legendary steel town of Třinec. “My parents wanted to show me the large-scale industry there,” Mácha said. “They have a blast furnace, a steel mill, everything, and they wanted to show me where all the metal is made. They tried to scare me and show me that ending up in a steel mill is not the right path. They hoped for a better future for me. I got out of the car, and across the river was blast furnace No. 6. It was a religious experience. It was literally like I was standing before an unknown god who was speaking to me in a language I had never heard before, but I understood it. At that moment, I knew this was something I had to be a part of.”

A year or two later, he noticed the landscape beginning to change as blast furnaces and steel mills in the Czech Republic closed, as did countless others around the world. That’s when, in 2008, Mácha began taking photographs and proved to be a natural. “I’ve never read a single book on photography,” he explained, “and I’ve never attended a single workshop.” Yet his work speaks directly to the people closest to the company. “He’s a good photographer,” said Steve Jadwisiak, senior business development manager at Trinity Products, a manufacturer of steel plate, pipe and coil based in O’Fallon, Missouri. “I think he’s a good portrait artist.”

Mácha quickly focused on photographing every single steel mill he could find around the world. In many cases, the plants he photographed closed shortly after his visit. “After those 16 years, the steel industry changed dramatically,” he said.

He is almost entirely self-funded, paying for his own travel, equipment and time. To cover costs, he has been publishing and selling his annual Beauty of Steel calendar for several years, and also selling copies of his prints and images. “I don’t expect to make a lot of money from my project,” he explained. “But it was never about the money for me.”

Besides the cost, the other difficulty is convincing companies to allow him to enter their factory premises to take photos. “The biggest challenge is getting permission and convincing companies that I’m not here to steal their technology and sell it to the Chinese,” Mácha said.

As the Beauty of Steel project has become more widely known throughout the industry, its access has improved slightly. However, at the same time, companies have adopted new technologies to become more environmentally friendly and are sometimes less willing to involve Mácha. This reluctance to participate is a shame, as the project offers several benefits to the steel industry.

Benefits for the steel industry

Industrial art as an end in itself

Anna Frounfelker, inside sales representative and director of social media marketing at Ferrosource, a global ferrous metals sourcing and distribution company, believes Mácha’s art has tremendous value. “What he does is important because he captures the raw beauty of the steelmaking process.”

“The scale of the things he shows are immense,” said Cory Bonnet, a Pittsburgh painter and sculptor who focuses on the steel industry and curates Patterns of Meaning’s exhibitions. “We should celebrate these achievements while working toward cleaner, more sustainable methods.”

Celebrating Manufacturing

For Mácha, this appreciation of the work of steelmakers is an essential part of his work. He believes it is high time that people in the steel industry stopped apologizing for their business and started taking pride in what their industry has done in the past and for the world today. “You are the ones who have shaped our civilization,” he said. “Be proud of what you do, because without steel there would be no civilization.”

Frounfelker agrees. “I believe this industry deserves to be celebrated,” she said. “He reminds me of Norman Rockwell. He shows that we live in a working-class world and that there are people who make it possible.”

Personnel development

It’s often said that manufacturers are their own worst enemies when it comes to marketing the importance of their work. Many don’t let visitors in for fear of revealing important trade secrets – even though most manufacturers use commercially available processes. But keeping people away hurts manufacturing and prevents potential future employees from seeing what’s at stake.

“I’m here to document their plant and make them part of the project, part of the legacy for future generations,” Mácha said. “All they see is a grey, cloud-producing factory on the horizon. If you could let them jump over the fence or walk through the gate and see all this magic, all this technology, it would drastically change society’s perspective.”

“He brings a lot of people together,” Jadwisiak said. “I learn a lot from this guy, and I think a lot of people do, too.”

“It makes the average person aware of this industry,” Frounfelker added. “You can’t walk out the door without touching steel. It’s the lifeblood of our industrial economy. If we’re going to survive, the next generation needs to know what we’re doing.”

“You have to know how things were done in the past and remember that and preserve that knowledge,” Bonnet said. “That’s how we inspire people to build for the future.”

A look into the future

Raymond Monroe, EVP of the Steel Founders’ Society of America, which works to promote the U.S. steel casting industry, noted, “Our culture tells us that only artists, programmers and people in the service sector are truly creative. But they misunderstood that and thought that people in engineering or manufacturing work in dead-end, uncreative and dehumanizing environments. But when you’re involved in something like that yourself, you know that the most creative people are the people in manufacturing because they have to be creative every day.” One of the biggest challenges facing industry today is how to effectively communicate that reality to our youth.

With this in mind, Mácha now focuses even more on reaching younger generations with his work. “I have given lectures to primary school students about the importance of the steel industry and mining using my pictures and I would like to show you their faces – they are so excited and surprised about the importance of the steel industry.”

“It really is pure magic, I have no other words for it. It’s like there are multiple fireworks displays every day. It’s incredible. I wish more people could see this.”