Review: “Pabst: An Excavation of Art” by Paul Bialas

Pabst Blue Ribbon has risen in the beer ranks over the last few years, a return to former glory, thanks to the embrace of urban hipsters who no doubt took their cue from the film “Blue Velvet” and its unsavory characters’ use of the brand as a mantra for a destructive night ahead.

The 168-year-old brewery originated in Milwaukee. Its Blue Ribbon beer debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, though it’s unclear that the beer actually won a blue ribbon. The ribbon on the can seems to be enough for its fans.

Pabst stands as one of those old-world American brews that has managed to stay alive despite the rise of micro-brews and a working class association, and its old headquarters in Milwaukee stands as both a gravestone to a world now gone and a crumbling tribute. This was the world of beloved brewing patriarchs and workers who could down a bucket of the stuff they helped make, now long gone and probably never to be recaptured.

Photographer Paul Bialas turned his attention to the old brewery and has self-published a book collecting many of the images that resulted, with some accompanying historical text, all with the blessing and encouragement of August Pabst, a former executive of the company.

For lovers of urban exploration and industrial decay, Bialas’ book is a welcome discovery. There are plenty of higher-profile books from major publishing companies mining similar territory, but Bialas’ work stands out for its intimacy and wonder, as well as its honesty. Bialas takes in whole rooms and small corners, captures and contrasts textures, colors and the minute debris created by time, offering a strong sense of living rooms now deceased.

Bialas takes you through the brew house, the malt house, the bottling building, as well as other Pabst sites, and he records not only the crumbling of the edifice, but the ghosts there too in the form of detritus left behind. Office equipment, tools, signs, stained glass and, of course, the occasional decrepit bottle or can of PBR, or even Pabst Extract, can be found laying around as the skeleton of a former community of workers continues to fade into history.

Bialas is a keen investigator and he takes you into nooks and crannies that you might not notice if you toured through it yourself, with a wonderful sense of the colors and textures — and, therefore, artfulness — of decay.

A good portion of what Bialas photographed no longer exists in the same form, now being refurbished into a hotel. Bialas is currently documenting that renovation project — you can see some of that work on his website — which makes this self-published release even more imperative to view, as the telling corpse from the past is being dressed up for tomorrow. A print edition can be purchased at lakecountryphoto.com/store.html. Ebook versions are available through Amazon’s Kindle store and iBooks.