American Mining Communities (ref 51)

Exhibition poster from Russell Lee’s photographs of mining communities in West Virginia and Kentucky, USA, documented in the 1940s and shown at Side Gallery 2 September-11 October 1991. (A2 594mm x 420mm)

In the poor homes of Appalachian miners far ‘up the hollow’ and in modern villages of well-run mining operations Lee looked and recorded precisely what he saw. He photographed miners and their families at work and at home and the resultant pictures were used in the fight to clean up the coal industry. They are amongst the best work Lee ever did. Russell Lee along with Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and others, developed the classic Farm Securities Administration photography in the 1930s.