Images of Appalachian Coalfields (review)

Book Reviews Levy, Builder. Images of Appalachian Coalfields. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. For fourteen years, Builder Levy spent some of his vacation time visiting the coal regions of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. Now 93 of the black and white photographs Levy took during those years have been published in Images ofAppalachian Coalfields. Just released by Temple University Press, the slim but handsome volume comes accompanied by an introduction from Helen Matthews Smith and a forward by Cornell Capa. To hear them tell it, Levy has made an important political statement in his photographs. Levy himself agrees. He describes his journeys through scenes of past union warfare and his encounters with suspicious representatives of coal management. He dedicates his book to "the Appalachian coal miners whose collective struggles for a better and more humane life have become an inspiring tradition, and to courageous coal miners all over the world." Seen through the editorial gloss provided by Levy, Smith, and Capa, the photographs may indeed be interpreted as dealing with the oppression of the working class. But they can also speak for themselves, and it is on that level that I wish to write about them. The photographs are divided into three main groups entitled "The Work," "The Community," and "The Legacy." All are black and white "duotones." Deprived of color's emotional and aesthetic impact, the viewer is forced to concentrate on the photographs' textures, patterns , and contrasts. One also becomes conscious of tonal range-in every black and white print there are nine possible tones available to the photographer, ranging from 0 (pure black) through the intermediate shades of grey to 9 (pure white). Allan Mills, a photographer friend of mine, tells me that the more a photo presents a wide tonal range, the more visually interesting and the less "flat" it is. In some of his photographs, Levy achieves this tonal range under daunting circumstances. There must be few more difficult places to take pictures than a subsurface mine, for instance, but on page 51 Levy shoots directly into his light source (a black miner's head lamp) and comes away with a marvelous portrait that shows us most of what we need to know about the working conditions of a miner's life. On page 64 there is a picture of a coal mining camp near Grundy, Virginia, which in a very different way also possesses the full scale of tones. In addition, both of these photographs are visually interesting in terms of design- the first is an arrangement of 58 circles and triangles, the second a series of variations on the s curve. Paging through the book, one comes across a number of other pictures which work well as both art and social commentary . On pages 56 and 57, two pictures of miners at the end of their shift have an unposed, "snapshot" feel about them which gives the viewer a sense of real understanding about what their work must be like. People on pages 84 and 106 have a much suffer look about them (indeed, it is almost as if Doris Ullman or Norman Rockwell had set them up for the photographer), but the side-lighting is wonderful, and the prints also succeed as formal designs. On page 107 there is another fine example ofsidelighting: the light shimmers through the tree on the left and falls on the face and hair of the girl to the right. The three figures, balanced among themselves and against the other pictorial elements, have a nobility about them which transforms this ordinary fishing scene into a picture of almost classic elegance. To be fair, there are also photographs which don't seem to work. There is a picture of a coal truck (or at least a coal truck if one looks very closely) working its way up a crowded street in Hazard, Kentucky. I'm not sure what Levy wants to say with this picture. There is the obligatory "Prepare to meet thy God" photograph. There are a couple of muddy roadhouse scenes. In each of these instances, I see neither an artistic nor a propaganda message-unless they are intended to point out some sort...