American Coal
Russell Lee Portraits
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.
In this skillfully curated and thoughtfully documented collection, Appel and Brinkley show how Russell Lee brought his understanding of the intersections of labor, health, and community to bear on his visual record of postwar coal country. American Coal vividly illustrates how Lee's photography centered the daily lives of workers with respect, nuance, and penetrating insight. The book not only stands as a valuable contribution to our understanding of midcentury U.S. documentary, it also foregrounds an ethic of vision that we can continue to learn from today.
After World War II ended Russell Lee aimed his lens at U.S. coal miners--at work, at home with family, and in leisure pursuits. American Coal offers an unflinching portrait of an industry that operated far from view, a closed society of company-owned mines and stores, of often segregated towns and housing. Lee’s warm, personal images struck a deep chord, propelling a remarkable healthcare and pension movement for coal miners that continues to this day. American Coal provides a new generation with the opportunity to witness Russell Lee’s accomplishment, each photograph beautifully presented with its original caption.
Russell Lee is one of the most important photographers that few know today. American Coal provides a compelling argument for why this should change. Appel and Brinkley’s remarkable text and curation not only bring Lee’s insightful 1946 investigation of America’s coal mines vividly to life, but they also remind readers that this photographer continues to have something to say about labor and persistence.
Russell Lee was a prominent American photographer, best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration.
Mary Jane Appel is a historian of American social documentary photography and the author of Russell Lee: A Photographer's Life and Legacy.
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His most recent book is Silent Spring Revolution.
- “The Promise: The Coal Mines Administration Photographs of Russell Lee” by Mary Jane Appel and Douglas Brinkley
- A Note about the Captions
- Plates
- Acknowledgments
- List of Mines
- Image Credits
Russell Lee Photographs
Images from the Russell Lee Photograph Collection at the Center for American History
By Russell Lee; Introduction by John Szarkowski and J. B. Colson
Reading Magnum
A Visual Archive of the Modern World
Edited by Steven Hoelscher; Introduction by Geoff Dyer; By Harry Ransom Center
