'The pictures here represent fourteen years of visiting and photographing Appalachian coal miners, their families, and neighbors. This book allows me to share my personal vision of these people and their environment, hidden from most of the nation in small towns and villages, tucked away in the hollows of the steep mountains and rolling hills of West Virginia, Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania'. With compassion and sensitivity, Builder Levy presents the coal mining communities of Appalachia. His compelling images, in 93 ...
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'The pictures here represent fourteen years of visiting and photographing Appalachian coal miners, their families, and neighbors. This book allows me to share my personal vision of these people and their environment, hidden from most of the nation in small towns and villages, tucked away in the hollows of the steep mountains and rolling hills of West Virginia, Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania'. With compassion and sensitivity, Builder Levy presents the coal mining communities of Appalachia. His compelling images, in 93 duotones, portray a once-beautiful region that has been increasingly scarred by an industry that has never demonstrated respect for the land or its people. For several decades the U.S. coal mining industry has been in a period of transition: technological advances have created massive layoffs; women have entered the workforce; the racial composition of mining communities has changed; and, environmental and health advocates have gained voice. The narrative accompanying Levy's photographs details these social and economic changes as revealed through the lives of people who endure the poverty and hardship of mining life, who cling to their family and community amid crises, and who are sustained by their traditions and their culture. The photos themselves reveal the toll that this struggle has taken. While memories of mine disasters and the daily threat of danger and black lung disease remain throughout these communities, Levy focuses on the dignity of the residents and their struggle against adverse conditions. Levy describes the sometimes mixed reception he received from miners, foremen, and company guards at various mining sites. By 'reading' the images, one senses that he did not simply gain access to witness but fully participated in the daily 'mantrips', the comfortable hospitality, the unity of miners surfacing after a long day underground. "Images of Appalachian Coalfields" forces the reader to confront the life of a mining community, to recognize the faces of struggle, camaraderie, defiance, endurance, and to admire the intense vision of a photographer whose love of subject pays homage to the human spirit. Builder Levy is a teacher in a New York City alternative high school. His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries, and included in permanent collections and numerous publications throughout the world.
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Seller's Description:
Good in good jacket. Black cloth boards in dust jacket, octavo, illustrated in b&w. Book has faint soil to boards, binding tight, previous owner's blindstamp to front flyleaf, text has some red ink underlining and marginalia. DJ sun toned to spine and top edges of panels, soil and rubbing, edgewear that includes small chips to spine head and top front corner.
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Seller's Description:
Near Fine in VeryGood jacket. Edition & printing not stated. 8.25"x10.25" 124 numb. pages. Black cloth w/gilt letters on spine. Intro by Helen Matthews Lewis, Foreword by Cornell Capa. Author photo by Alice Deutsch Levy. Designed by Arlene Putterman. Spine straight, binding tight, pages clean w/vanilla tone. Not x-library, unclipped (no price), PON inside both covers. Touch of foxing to edges. Edge & shelf wear to DJ. Secure ship in box w/track #. "Through his photographs, Bulder Levy gives an eloquent portrayal of the dignity and pride of coal miners. He shows the conditions against which their families have struggled, and the corresponding strenth of family, church, and community life. Thes images provide an honest and compassionate look at coalfield Appalachia"-Richard L. Trumka, President, UMWA.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 26 x 21 cm. xiii 124pp. Black cloth in dust jacket. Black and white photographs. Fading to jacket spine. Foxing to foredges. Part of the Visual Studies Series edited by Douglas Harper.
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Seller's Description:
Fine. 0877225885. This is NOT the copy of the book depicted in the stock photo. First edition (no additional printings listed), with original publisher's promotional blurb laid-in. Hardcover, fine in very good dustjacket. Spine portion and margins of dustjacket faded, bit of foxing and light soil, rubbed along edges. Book itself is tight, clean, paper crisp, unmarked and apparently never read. 93 sensitive black-and-white documentary photographs of miners and mining communities taken in the 1970s and early '80s in West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Photography; coal mining; 9.6 X 7.3 X 1.0 inches; 124 pages.