Color photograph of a group of men pushing a train car filled with barrels next to a ship

Untitled (44UN-7996-115), Ghana, 1958

Todd Webb

Archival pigment print

Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive L2020.85.29

Not on View

A matrix of smokestacks, ship rigging, and oil platforms—Webb’s close view of Ghana’s working waterfront is layered with metal, wood, and wire with neither land nor sea in sight. A massive boat hull blocks the horizon, confining our perspective to a human-made world. In the foreground, nine men push a shipping container filled with 75 cylindrical barrels. The complex geometry of Webb’s photograph—built on rectangles, squares, triangles and circles—depicts a panorama of big industry and large-scale transnational trade.

Image: In Copyright. Courtesy of the Todd Webb Archive

Urbanization

Return to Urbanization