Keith Rutowski

Keith Rutowski is a Seattle-based photographer, writer, and filmmaker. Rutowski earned a B.A. in Journalism and minor in Geography from the University of Cincinnati in 2009. He began taking courses in Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication M.A. Photography program in 2014. He uses words and images as a vehicle both for self-expression and to attempt to reflect and interpret elements of the human condition. His is interested in place, memory, and identity, as well as the influence that power and class dynamics have on our society.

Wheeling: Endurance of the Spirit

The city was molten; it was the aroma of cigars; it was seemingly free-flowing promise. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, residents of Wheeling, West Virginia found opportunity in its coal-filled hills, iron foundries, breweries, and glass and stogie factories. And although they faced pollution and sometimes unsafe working conditions, there was a general sense of pride in living in this place of makers and an early important gateway to the expanding West. This is the city that lingers in the minds of 78-year-old native Ed Gorczyca and his contemporaries—a Wheeling that their grandparents and parents helped to prosper and that remained vibrant through their own youth before the steady decline took hold.

Over Gorczyca’s lifetime, the collapse of the Upper Ohio Valley manufacturing base fueled an exodus of working-age people and the city’s population declined by half, dropping from its peak of 61,659 people at the 1930 census to fewer than 28,000 today. Demographers at West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research predict that it will be difficult to overcome the slide. As of fall 2015, viable long-term employment opportunities remain in short supply, while out-of-town transient workers following a regional natural gas boom have helped drive up rental prices in the city.

In spite of these present challenges to its recovery, some positive signs of renewal are also emerging in the city for the first time in years. Some Wheeling natives have fresh ideas and a few ambitious young people have recently moved to town. New city partnerships and grassroots organizations have been founded in an attempt to rebuild Wheeling physically, economically, and spiritually. A collective reassessment of the city’s identity is taking place, yielding both eulogies for what is missing and hope for what might be restored or created.

What calls to people in Wheeling today? Is it the song of dusk enveloping the grand old bridge? Is it the warm, proud theater where Frankenstein used to appear glowing on celluloid at the midnight show? It could indeed be something already lost to time, that elusive specter of the now vacant department store’s holiday model trains making their rounds or some other loved thing that may somehow return to town. Or it could be the stubborn sense of promise that was held between these hills for someone’s parents, the promise that built this city and survived a precipitous fall, a promise that says you could write the next chapter of Wheeling’s story.

To view more of Keith’s work please visit his website.