Coalfield Generations: Health, Mining, and the Environment
Earl Dotter, Photographer
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Town Life | Health Issues and Healthcare | Working at the Mines | Mining and the Environment | Recommended Resources
Photo Essay: Town Life
Connecting with people in specific places lies at the heart of Dotter's project of documenting miners. The photographs in this section sample daily life in the coalfields, from family reunions and baseball parks to changing patterns of consumption and town structures. Through his photographs of the everyday, Dotter challenges stereotypes of Appalachia while calling attention to contemporary problems.
Changes in the coal industry have affected the area in myriad ways, some of them depicted in these images. While coal keeps the lights on, businesses like Wal-Mart are becoming the major employers. When mines close and the number of miners decreases, company housing may deteriorate, be abandoned, or replaced by mobile homes. But this is not just a story of desolation: homes remain, with hanging plants and wind chimes. A consistent element of Dotter's work locates his subjects' effects on their communities despite difficult conditions.
Dotter's work chronicles other concerns in these coalfield towns, particularly problems of health — obesity, tobacco use, and disability. Due to automobile accidents, work-related accidents, and substance abuse, disability rates are high here. Working conditions, unemployment rates, and poor roads also take their tolls.
Many of Dotter's photographs of daily life tell stories of consumption, particularly the ubiquity of tobacco and the epidemic of obesity. Sugar-laced soda is a constant in this area as demonstrated by the women on their porch, the boy at the baseball game, the man in the grocery store, and the RC sign that announces Whitesburg, Kentucky. Other photos in this series feature outdoor pursuits such as gardening and fishing. In the captions below, Dotter speaks about some of these images.
Changes in the coal industry have affected the area in myriad ways, some of them depicted in these images. While coal keeps the lights on, businesses like Wal-Mart are becoming the major employers. When mines close and the number of miners decreases, company housing may deteriorate, be abandoned, or replaced by mobile homes. But this is not just a story of desolation: homes remain, with hanging plants and wind chimes. A consistent element of Dotter's work locates his subjects' effects on their communities despite difficult conditions.
Dotter's work chronicles other concerns in these coalfield towns, particularly problems of health — obesity, tobacco use, and disability. Due to automobile accidents, work-related accidents, and substance abuse, disability rates are high here. Working conditions, unemployment rates, and poor roads also take their tolls.
Many of Dotter's photographs of daily life tell stories of consumption, particularly the ubiquity of tobacco and the epidemic of obesity. Sugar-laced soda is a constant in this area as demonstrated by the women on their porch, the boy at the baseball game, the man in the grocery store, and the RC sign that announces Whitesburg, Kentucky. Other photos in this series feature outdoor pursuits such as gardening and fishing. In the captions below, Dotter speaks about some of these images.
Earl Dotter:
Employment: Wal-Mart has become West Virginia's largest employer. That's a pretty surprising statistic in light of the impact the coal economy has had on West Virginia for generations. That this Wal-Mart is situated on a strip mine bench underscores the irony. Jobs that used to be in the mines are moving to corporate big box stores like Wal-Mart. |
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Community: Downtowns that used to be a hub of community life in the coalfields are also impacted in a major way by the movement of commerce to national chains and big box stores. You see adjacent to the Wal-Mart a Holiday Inn Express. We've all probably stayed in that kind of hotel, but back in the days when I was a shooter for the United Mine Workers Journal, I would stay in the Pioneer Hotel in downtown Logan, which supported the downtown of that county seat town. |
Diet and obesity: My conception of an Appalachian individual when I first came to the coalfields during the war on poverty was a lean, gaunt, skinny individual. Today obesity is a major issue in the coalfields. Lifestyle changes, even the mechanization of work, have altered the physique and the health of mining folks that I rub shoulders with. Diet plays an important role. Used to be most folks had garden plots outside their homes in these company towns, but that's almost history. The older generation still puts them out, but not so much the current working population. |
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Consumption: It's a fact that throughout our society, families often need two wage earners. If one adult in a family setting would be largely responsible for the garden, someone also needed to take a job at Wal-Mart or a local fast food restaurant at a minimum wage to support a modest lifestyle. There's a wave of diabetes throughout the coalfields that relates to the food consumption habits of coal mining families. In following shoppers at the local supermarket, I saw heavy emphasis on prepackaged food, on soda pop, and items low in food value. That's a difference that's glaring. |
Changes in housing structures: My photos of buildings are emblematic of the change that's occurred from the days when I regularly stumbled upon intact coal camps in the 1970s. That was at the end of an era. Today I return to Dehue, West Virginia, just outside the county seat of Logan in Logan County, and find just a bare field with a prep plant being built on that site. Where I can, I show the old and the new in juxtaposition — in McRoberts there's the newer mobile home, trailer, against the falling-down row of old camp houses with the mountain in the background. That picture is useful in showing the difference. |
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Essay Sections:
Introduction | Town Life | Health Issues and Healthcare | Working at the Mines | Mining and the Environment | Recommended Resources
