Bethlehem Steel Plant, 1998. © Stephen Wilkes/Courtesy of ArtsQuest

“I photographed the decay of a dinosaur,” Stephen Wilkes said in a statement about his documentation of the dismantling of the original Bethlehem Steel Plant for Archaeology magazine. “It was a vast sculpture of wreckage in deafening silence, about to vanish into memory. The dinosaur was a massive disintegrating monument to America’s industrial civilization.” Though Bethlehem Steel is not the pillar of industry it once was, festivals like the Lehigh Valley Photography Month keeps the community alive.

The third-annual Lehigh Valley Photography Month (LVPM) kicks off today, with the Olympus InVision Photo Festival, through November 3 at the Banana Factory and SteelStacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The festival features work by Wilkes, Olivia Bee, Chase Jarvis and their artist-in-residence Eugene Richards.