eBook - PDF

American Coal

Name: American Coal
ISBN: 9781477329658

Russell Lee Portraits

Mary Jane Appel,

Douglas Brinkley,

160 pages
English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

American Coal

Russell Lee Portraits

Mary Jane Appel,

Douglas Brinkley,

About this book

More than 100 powerful images by noted photographer Russell Lee that document the working conditions and lives of coal mining communities in the postwar United States; publication coincides with an exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

In 1946 the Truman administration made a promise to striking coal miners: as part of a deal to resume work, the government would sponsor a nationwide survey of health and labor conditions in mining camps. One instrumental member of the survey team was photographer Russell Lee. Lee had made his name during the Depression, when, alongside Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, he used his camera to document agrarian life for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Now he trained his lens on miners and their families to show their difficult circumstances despite their essential contributions to the nation's first wave of postwar growth.

American Coal draws from the thousands of photographs that Lee made for the survey—also on view in the US National Archives and Records Administration's exhibition Power & Light—and includes his original, detailed captions as well as an essay by biographer Mary Jane Appel and historian Douglas Brinkley. They place his work in context and illuminate how Lee helped win improved conditions for his subjects through vivid images that captured an array of miners and their communities at work and at play, at church and in school, in moments of joy and struggle, ultimately revealing to their fellow Americans the humanity and resilience of these underrecognized workers.

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Yes, you can access American Coal by Mary Jane Appel,Douglas Brinkley in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Art & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.