Skywalkers: The Legacy of the Mohawk Ironworker presents tintype portraits of Mohawk Ironworkers from the World Trade Center. Thirty men from the Kahnawake and Aquasasne reservations in Canada were photographed in an effort to tell the next chapter in the 9/11 story: Rebuilding. For over a century and a half, Mohawk Ironworkers have traveled from Canada to New York City to build our iconic skyline from the Empire State Building to the George Washington Bridge. “A Mohawk family tradition,” the portraits in this series include fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, cousins near and distant, and friends. Done in gangs of six consisting of connectors, bolsters-up, journeymen, tag-linemen, and signalmen, ironwork requires strength, skill, and ingenuity to guide massive steel beams weighing up to 20,000 pounds into the steel skeleton of the building. From an apprentice to a forty-two-year career veteran, the journey of the Mohawk ironworker is told through the landscape of each face. Tintypes offer an archeological snapshot of who we are: each hair, freckle, and wrinkle oscillate with an uncanny palpability. In an age of digital photography, the unique medium of the tintype celebrates our individuality. Skywalkers makes visible the present-day faces of the Mohawk nation, who have contributed to the rebuilding of New York City, helping this city to rise above a tragedy.
Melissa Cacciola:
I studied fine art and the historic preservation of art at Columbia University and New York University. Trained by the legendary John Coffer, I specialize in tintype and nineteenth-century photographic processes. Tintyping is an unforgiving medium that requires technical and aesthetic artistry, dedication, precision, and knowledge of its historical and chemical background. Although conversant with other types of photography, it was only when I began tintyping that I found my voice. The portraits I can create with this technique are more powerful than any other process I have used, allowing me to capture people as they are and to tell their story. Each of my recent portrait projects focused on three very different groups of people: New York Artists (Chemical Chimera); active duty and veterans of the United States Military Deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq (War and Peace); and the Mohawk Ironworkers at the World Trade Center (Skywalkers). All three projects have or will be exhibited as solo shows. NPR, Newsweek, Time Lightbox, and Time Magazine have published tintype portraits from my series War and Peace and Skywalkers. I was awarded a Premier grant from COASHI/NYC Department of Cultural Affairs for my work on War and Peace (2013), and also received a nomination for Photo District News 30 (2012), and an honorable mention from Fotovisura (2012). My portraits can be found at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and in private collections.
