Coal is still king in much of Appalachia, yet the heritage and history of the people who enabled the United States to become an economic superpower in the Industrial age are slipping away. This remarkable book presents arresting black and white photographs and powerful oral histories that chronicle the legacy of coalmining in southern West Virginia. Ken and Melanie Light traveled hundreds of miles through rugged, isolated terrain recording the stories of a range of people whose lives were shaped by coal: retired miners, men and women who have been jobless their entire lives, a contemporary coal baron, a justice of the State Supreme Court of West Virginia, a writer who bravely ran for governor on a third party ticket, and people who returned to the hills when their lives failed elsewhere. What emerges is a complex portrait of people locked into an intricate web of geography, history, and unfettered profiteering. In Light's poignant images and in their own distinctive voices the residents of Coal Hollow--a fictional composite of the communities the Lights surveyed--reveal how the intersection of mountain culture and the greed of the coal companies produced the most powerful economy in the world yet brought crushing poverty to a region of once-proud people.
Ken Light is a social documentary photographer whose work has appeared in books, magazines, on-line media and exhibitions. A new book Coal Hollow was published in 2006 by The University of California Press. His book Witness In Our Time; Working Lives of Documentary Photographers a text was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in October 2000/2010. His photo book TEXAS DEATH ROW University Press of Mississippi was published in the Fall of 1997. TEXAS DEATH ROW is a look at life inside the death house as the condemned wait to be executed in Americas largest and most active Death Row. This work was published in Newsweek Magazine (6 pgs) , Paris Match (France-8 pgs.), Tempo (Germany-6pgs), London Telegraph, Nieuwe Revu (Amsterdam-6 pgs) and in Japan and Korea, Holland, Denmark, Mexico, Spain, Italy as well as on MSNBC on line , 60 Minutes and numerous documentary films
He is also the author of DELTA TIME published in 1995 by the Smithsonian Institution Press. This book looks at rural Black poverty, cotton, and the southern landscape and has 104 photographs and an essay by legendary civil rights organizer Bob Moses. This work has been published in VSD in Paris, Granta, the London Independent, Spanish Elle with Walker Evans and in the Academy Award nominated documentary film Freedom on My Mind. His other books are TO THE PROMISED LAND (Aperture 1988) WITH THESE HANDS (Pilgrim Press 1986) and IN THE FIELDS (Harvest Press 1982) which examine the lives of farm workers and their journey from Mexico illegally to the United States.
He has exhibited internationally in over 180 one-person and group shows including at the International Center of Photography and is the collection of numerous collections including the San Francisco MOMA, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the International Center of Photography and the American Museum of Art at the Smithsonian. He has received four National Endowment for the Arts grants including two Photographers Fellowships, the Dorothea Lange Fellowship and a fellowship from the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation. Other awards include the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement award in photography, the Thomas More Storke International Journalism Award and Judges Special Recognition (Cannon Photo Essayist) in the University of Missouri/NPPA Pictures of the Year competition.
He is an adjunct professor and director of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley. He has taught workshops at the ICP in New York City, The Missouri Workshop, Anderson Ranch, the S.F. Art Institute and the School for Photographic Studies in Prague. He was a founder of the International Fund for Documentary Photography which awarded grants to photographers and fotovision.org a documentary studies workshop based In San Francisco, California.
