|
| help | media kit | about us | services | contact |
| |||
| |||
|
| ||
| NEWEST TRENDS . SEARCH . BUY . JOIN . COLLECT . RESEARCH . READ . DISCUSS | |||
| |||
|
Indepth Arts News: "Ken Light: Coal Hollow" 2005-12-09 until 2006-02-26 International Center of Photography New York, NY, USA United States of America
Light shows how the erosion of the coal mining industry has devastated
individual lives and families in the close-knit communities of rural West
Virginia. Where generations of coal miners once made their livelihood off
the plentiful supply of coal their mountains produce, machines are now
replacing manpower, and communities are struggling to maintain their
culture and heritage. The collapse of the coal industry has left in its
wake poverty, unemployment, drug use, and mine-related diseases. Among
other things, this environment has proven to be fertile ground for a
resurgence of Ku Klux Klan activity.
The Bronx-born Light (b. 1951) has spent much of his photographic
career working in a black-andwhite documentary mode, with the hope that
photographic evidence will make a political difference. He is the author
of five monographs including “Texas Death Row” (1997), “Delta Time”
(1995), “To the Promised Land” (1988), “With These Hands” (1986), and “In
the Fields” (1982), and has edited “Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of
Documentary Photographers” (2000), which features twenty-two interviews
with fellow photojournalists.
Light has received two National Endowment for the Arts Photographers
Fellowships, the Dorothea Lange Fellowship and a fellowship from the Erna
and Victor Hasselblad Foundation. He is currently Adjunct Professor and
Director of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of
Journalism at the University of California Berkeley, and is a founder of
the International Fund for Documentary Photography.
IMAGE
|  |
|
|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
||
Social documentary photographer Ken Light’s
stark and moving black-and-white photographs will be on view at the
International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd
Street) from December 9, 2005 through February 26, 2006. Ken Light: Coal
Hollow is a collection of twenty photographs taken by the photographer
over three years, from 1999 through 2002, which expose the social
consequences of the deterioration of the once booming coal mining business
in West Virginia, the poorest state in the nation.
