Coal Hollow - Photographs and Oral Histories

1. Auflage 2006
ISBN: 978-0-520-24654-6
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 4, 151 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 301 mm x 289 mm, Gewicht: 1361 g

Reihe: Series in Contemporary Photography

Coal is still king in much of Appalachia, yet the heritage and history of the people who enabled the United States to become an economic superpower in the Industrial age are slipping away. This remarkable book presents arresting black and white photographs and powerful oral histories that chronicle the legacy of coalmining in southern West Virginia. Ken and Melanie Light traveled hundreds of miles through rugged, isolated terrain recording the stories of a range of people whose lives were shaped by coal: retired miners, men and women who have been jobless their entire lives, a contemporary coal baron, a justice of the State Supreme Court of West Virginia, a writer who bravely ran for governor on a third party ticket, and people who returned to the hills when their lives failed elsewhere. What emerges is a complex portrait of people locked into an intricate web of geography, history, and unfettered profiteering. In Light’s poignant images and in their own distinctive voices the residents of Coal Hollow—a fictional composite of the communities the Lights surveyed—reveal how the intersection of mountain culture and the greed of the coal companies produced the most powerful economy in the world yet brought crushing poverty to a region of once-proud people.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Light, Ken

Light, Melanie

Weitere Mitwirkende

Light, Ken

Reich, Robert

Schell, Orville

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie Fotografie: Geschichte und Sammlungen
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Primärer Sektor Bergbau
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword
Orville Schell
Robert B. Reich

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Slag
Melanie Light

PHOTOGRAPHS
Ken Light

ORAL HISTORIES
Melanie Light

Preface: Field Notes
A Short History Lesson
Mountain Woman
Retired Coal Miner
Snake Handler
Preacher with a Mission
Return to the Mountains
The Lost Generation
Mayor of North Fork
Local Coal Industries Owner
Justice for West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals
Novelist and Political Activist

Über Autor(innen)

Ken Light, a social documentary photographer, is Adjunct Professor and Director of the Center for Photography, Graduate School of Journalism, at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his books are Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers (2000), Texas Death Row (1997), and Delta Time (1995). Melanie Light is a writer and Executive Director of Fotovision.org.