Twenty years ago, thousands of Rhode Islanders worked in unionized factories for companies like Brown & Sharpe, BIF, and Health-Tex. Huge industrial plants with hundreds of militant workers, however, no longer exist in the Ocean State. They closed or moved overseas. Their employees found service industry jobs, retired, or moved south.

That faded world of lathes, sweat, washrooms, and picket signs is captured in Duane Clinker's photography exhibit at the Mathewson Street United Methodist Church in Providence. Currently pastor at Warwick's Hillsgrove United Methodist Church, Clinker started taking photos in the late 1970s while making parts for nuclear power plants at BIF's West Warwick factory.

A member of the Steelworkers Union, Clinker served as the plant's strike committee chairman in 1978. When the union returned to work after a dispute, his normally drab gray lathe had been painted pink. This slap at his politics was only part of an intense company campaign to force the strike's leadership to quit, Clinker relates. Chairs were removed from work areas, for example, and when the union protested, returned without backs. Suddenly, shop rules and break times were strictly enforced.

In the midst of the conflict, Clinker got a break. He was assigned to work with welder Alton Stuckey, who was also a photographer. Stuckey taught Clinker to use a torch -- and a camera -- and the two worked together "to portray the dignity and exploitation of life," Clinker recalls. The effort was short-lived. In 1981, BIF banned photography in the plant, and Clinker quit.

He moved on to photograph the state police tear-gassing strikers at Brown & Sharpe. One exceptional photo in the exhibit illustrates the conflicting allegiances faced by workers as police and their employer combined to crush their protest: Marie, a young woman wearing a Machinists' union cap and a Brown & Sharpe softball jacket, looks dazed as she stands in a crowd of strikers and helmeted police.

Although Clinker's exhibit features other subjects, the industrial photos are the backbone, providing a rare and intimate view of factory life. The exhibit opens on Sunday, September 9 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The gallery is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon, and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The show closes September 28.

Issue Date: September 7 - 13, 2001