Research Catalog

Title

Coal Hollow : photographs and oral histories / Ken Light and Melanie Light ; with forewords by Orville Schell and Robert B. Reich.

Author

Light, Ken.

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Light, Melanie, 1958-
• University of California, Berkeley. Center for Photography.

Description

xii, 139 p. : ill.; 29 x 30 cm.

Summary

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.

Series Statement

Series in contemporary photography ; 4

Uniform Title

Series in contemporary photography ; 4.

Subject

• Coal miners > West Virginia > Interviews
• Coal miners > West Virginia > Pictorial works
• Coal mines and mining > West Virginia > Pictorial works
• Poor > West Virginia > Interviews
• Poor > West Virginia > Pictorial works
• West Virginia > Environmental conditions > Pictorial works

Genre/Form

• Interviews
• Pictorial works.

Note

• Series numbering from CIP.
• "Published in association with the Graduate School of Journalism, Center for Photography, University of California, Berkeley."

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

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.

ISBN

• 0520246543 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 9780520246546

LCCN

^^2005015749

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library