Christopher Payne's exhibition "Made in America: The Industrial Photography of Christopher Payne" at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum showcases 72 large-format photographs documenting active American factories and manufacturing processes. The trained architect turned photographer spent a decade visiting dozens of production sites across the United States, from the New York Times printing plant in Queens to the Bollman Hat Company in Pennsylvania, capturing workers' craftsmanship and the intricate steps involved in making everything from Peeps candies to jet engines. The exhibition is organized into three sections—traditional handcraft, large-scale production, and cutting-edge technologies—and coincides with the Smithsonian's celebration of the nation's 250th anniversary.
While the exhibition draws on the legacy of 20th-century industrial photographers like Lewis Hine and Margaret Bourke-White, who documented labor conditions and social change, Payne's work deliberately sidesteps contemporary economic uncertainties, geopolitical strife, and the decline of local manufacturing. Instead, it focuses on the skill, ingenuity, and wonder of the making process. This matters because it offers a visually compelling but arguably sanitized portrait of American industry during a period of rapid transformation, raising questions about what "Made in America" truly represents in an era of overseas production, rising costs, and political rhetoric around American exceptionalism.