Through the Lens of Loss:

Photography, Memory, and Transatlantic Deindustrialization 

Thomas Heise 

June 18, 2026 / 18:00-19:30 

Room 301, 3F, Building 10, Sophia University 

In person only / No prior registration required 

This talk examines how photography serves as a crucial lens for understanding the complex interplay of memory and loss within transatlantic deindustrialization. Examining the rigorous formalism of the industrial typologies by the highly influential German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, I argue that their seemingly objective images, while capturing a disappearing world, are imbued with historical pathos and become sites for contested interpretations of industrial heritage across Europe and the U.S. The discussion then turns to the counter-narratives offered by the U.S. photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier, whose images of Pittsburgh's steel towns explicitly foreground the human and racialized costs of industrial collapse. By analyzing these diverse photographic practices, the presentation reveals how visual archives not only document physical decline but also actively shape collective memory, challenge dominant narratives of progress, and expose the enduring social, economic, and environmental consequences of deindustrialization on both sides of the Atlantic.  

Thomas Heise is a scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first-century U.S. literature whose books include The Gentrification Plot: New York and the Postindustrial Crime Novel (Columbia, 2022) and Urban Underworlds: a Geography of Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture (Rutgers, 2011). He is also the author of the lyrical novel Moth (Sarabande, 2013) and Horror Vacui: Poems (Sarabande, 2006). His essays have appeared in American Literary History, Modern Fiction Studies, Twentieth-Century Literature, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, ASAP / Journal, and elsewhere. His fiction and poetry can be found in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Chicago Review, Santa Monica Review, and The Missouri Review. He is an Associate Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University (Abington) and lives in New York City.  

This talk is organized by Megha Wadhwa (Assistant Professor, Sophia University) and Hannah Holtzman (Assistant Professor, Sophia University).