Cloud Factory: A Portrait of the Calumet Region is an exploration into the medium of documentary. Through the collection and assembly of found and archived photos, footage, objects, and recorded interviews, I am painting a portrait of a place not often pictured: my home, the Calumet Region, affectionately nicknamed The Region. Once one of North America's most biodiverse regions, The Region encapsulates the Southeast and East sides of Chicago and much of Northwest Indiana. Some of the world's largest steel and oil facilities are operated out of Region residents' backyards, as it is one of the densest industrial sectors in the country. The events and realities of industry, stories of blue-collar experience, are often told by an employer, politician, or corporate office. Cloud Factory seeks to tell these stories straight from the source through the words of workers and the impacted neighbors of industry. Residents, organizers, and blue collar workers are speaking their own truths, documented through video testimonials, and physically represented through a recreated blue-collar living space. The climate crisis, continually spoken about in far away terms both timeline-wise and spatially, has already begun to mount a toll in places like the Calumet Region. The climate crisis is happening all around and in front of you and me, right now.During my time at the University of Michigan I have found that The Calumet Region is a place that people drive through to get to school or to Chicago, but don’t really see. This is a form of conditioning and normalization surrounding industry, you just don’t see it. Cloud Factory is about stopping your car, and looking at a place that is so central to it all.Creating a living archive where these stories can breathe creates space for blue-collardness to command the narrative. Cloud Factory does not seek to guide a narrative, but rather to uncover one. This is the goal.

I am a fifth generation East Chicago resident. East Chicago is 80% zoned industrial, 17% zoned residential, and 90% black and hispanic.Poor communities of color are targeted because it is assumed that said communities cannot self advocate and win. White middle class communities are rarely targets. The level of industry seen within the Calumet Region is never seen reflected in white affluent communities. The Calumet Region is a case study. It is one of many.

Growing up in East Chicago, you come to realize that your neighbors have either lived on the block for generations or that they are always in flux and transition. For multi-generational long term residents, there is a deep sense of normalcy and allowance surrounding industrial targeting of what is home. For short term renters, of which there are many, the issues surrounding industrial targeting compete with other more urgent matters when the bills are due. And so, the targeting is allowed to continue. This is systematic racism and classism working as it is designed.