Mining For Images Photo Gallery

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but geographer GeoffBuckley found that photographs ofearly 20th century coal mining operationsdidn’t always tell the full story of the impactof mining on people and the environment.

In 1995 Buckley visited the Smithsonian Institution in search of pictures to accompany his dissertation on coal mining. As he rifled through boxes piled atop steel shelves, he discovered more than 4,000 photographs taken by Consolidation Coal Company between 1909 and the 1940s. The Smithsonian Institution acquired the pictures in the 1960s to use in an exhibit on mining in America but never displayed them. Consolidation Coal Company was one of the nation’s biggest coal companies in the early 1900s and today is part of a giant energy conglomerate called Consol Energy.

Buckley wanted to know why these photos were taken and the story behind them. His new book published by Ohio University Press, Extracting Appalachia — Images of The Consolidation Coal Company 1910-1945, tells the tale of the photographs and Consolidation Coal Company’s impact in Appalachia — especially in Kentucky and West Virginia, where many of the photographs were taken.

Buckley used the company’s employee magazine, Consolidation Coal Company Mutual Monthly, company documents, and interviews with retired miners to help him critically read the photographs and understand the trade’s terminology.

The materials showed Buckley that the photographs and other documents presented a one-sided view of the company’s impact and manipulated thought.

“It is easy to look at this collection and think, ‘Wow, I don’t understand what coal miners were complaining about back then — life looked good,’” says Buckley, an assistant professor of geography at Ohio University.

The photos, many of which were published in the company’s magazine, showed scenes from the company-owned towns and mines. They were often used to show investors what the company thought it brought to the town.

“The company used these pictures to put their best foot forward, but they weren’t always the truthful depiction of what life and living conditions were like,” Buckley says.

The pictures also clearly show environmental alteration of the land. Many of the photographs were used to train new miners; other photos were of mining accidents taken for insurance purposes.

“A lot of these were pictures that no company in their right mind would take today,” Buckley says. “They showed deforested hillsides and polluted water, and some showed violence.”

Buckley knew nothing about photography before finding this collection, but now he is less naive when he looks at a picture. “In many ways we privilege sight over other senses,” he says. “We look at photos and think that they represent actual truth.”

For more information about Geoff Buckley’s research,visit the Web at http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~buckleg1/.