Chimney Sweep

Johnny Fernhout trained and worked primarily in film, serving as cameraman for The Spanish Earth (1937) by John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway and as documentary director for the Communist Party in 1930s Holland and the United States during World War II. Fernhout’s turn to still photography was informed by his political commitments, including to the Communist-affiliated Association of Worker Photographers. Although the five images in this series depicting chimney sweeps read like a storyboard for a short film, they were likely intended for magazine publication. By combining arresting views with a variety of narrative emphases—in one, a man seems to dance across the tiles; in another, he cleans diligently; in a third, two chimney sweeps confer—Fernhout conveys the dangers of this occupation without blindly heroizing his subjects.