Brazen Grit

Share refreshments at the opening of 

Brazen Grit: Images of Brass Valley

an exhibition of photographs by Emery Roth

November 12, 2016 from 2 PM to 4 PM @ Minor Library, Roxbury, CT

Exhibition runs Nov. 12 thru Jan. 7

Brazen Grit: Images of Brass Valley

We are Makers. After our time in the trees, our human minds freed our dexterous hands to do impossible things. Making stuff, handiwork, is in our DNA. At least it’s in mine, which is maybe why it feels like death when a manufacturing region vanishes and a culture of innovation is hollowed out. The earliest photographs in this exhibit were made in 2011 when my colleague and I were invited to photograph men using ancient machinery in the last brass mills in Brass Valley. The mills ceased operation in 2013, and I made the most recent images in this exhibit this summer and fall, as the last mills were being picked and detoxified prior to demolition. For six years I’ve sought to understand these mills and the men who ran them and those who demolish them. These photographs are the stories the men and the mills have given me.

They called the steep valley of Connecticut’s Naugatuck River "Brass Valley,” because from the time the world began running on steam and bearings, trolleys and soot, the Naugatuck Valley came to be where most of the world’s brass manufacturing happened. Beginning with the iron industry in the Northwest Hills, Connecticut became known for its metalworking and its machine innovations. New Britain was known as “Hardware City.” Meriden was the “Silver City.” Southington was the “Bell City.” But brass had a whole valley. From Bridgeport to Winsted was where brass was made and made into stuff from clips to clocks to the fittings for industry and the weapons of war. I was privileged to witness and photograph the final chapter in the story of Brass Valley.