Mining Photographs and Other Pictures 1948-1968 (review)

156 the minnesota review It's a difficult route to stick to, but with these two examples as guides to the boundaries on dther side, the task is made that much easier. MICHAEL SPRINKER Leslie Shedden. Mining Photographs and Other Pictures 1948-1968. Eds. Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Robert Willkie; intro. by Robert WiUkie; essays by Don McGiUivray and AUan Sekula. Co-pubUshed by The Press of the Nova Scotia CoUege of Art and Design (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and The University College of Cape Breton Press (Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia), 1983. 333 photographs. 308 pp. $25 (doth). Leslie Shedden was a compdent, hardworking, and successful commeraal photographer in the smaU coal mining community of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He took over his father's studio in 1948, and for the next thirty years produced photographs on demand for dients who induded individuals, schools, community groups, and small businesses. His biggest customer was the Dominion of Canada Steel and Coal Corporation, known as Dosco, for whom he made about 2000 pictures. Shedden photographed virtually everything from the setting of explosives in the mines and the wash house toilets to bridge parties and high school cheerleaders. When he retired his entire negative archive was induded in the sale of his studio to a younger photographer named Cyril MacDonald. There is nothing particularly unusual in anyofthis. Shedden was like thousands ofsmalltown commeraal photographers. What is remarkable is that approximately 300 of his photographs have been published in book form, and by no less eminent a press than that of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. The NSCAD Press is well known for "source materials of the contemporary arts," and has in the past pubUshed writings by such luminaries of the international avant-garde as Yvonne Rainer, Donald Judd, and Michael Snow. These books are, needless to say, accessible only to a small, savvy artworld audience . But in the summer of 1980, according to editor Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, the editorial policy of the Press was revised: It no longer seemed reasonable or produttive to continue a poücy that exclusively pubUshed artist's writings and documents regardless ofthdr relevance for the situation of the institution and its primary audience and support group, the students, the local community, and the audience for cultural criticism in general, (p. vi) It was at this point that Cyril MacDonald approached the Press with LesUe Shedden's archive . The result is Mining Photographs and Other Pictures, a first for an artists' press and a groundbreaking book in the history of photography. Here is a book of photographs which make no claim whatsoever to aesthetic merit; nor do they pretend to enthraU us with the spectacle of history or enchant us with the otherness of exotic lands and peoples. The photographs of coal mines and machinery were never meant to be seen by an audience with no knowledge of, and perhaps no interest in, mining. The "other pictures" show us ordinary , even anonymous, people acting out the rituals and ceremonies of everyday life. These pictures are both strange and familiar, like a family album that belongs to someone dse. They wUl not yield their sentimental associations, nor will the mining photographs yield thdr technical knowledge. Why, then, are wc looking at them? What are we to see in them? The answers are provided in the accompanying texts by local labor historian Don McGiUivray and photography critic and historian Allan Sekula. The essays speak what the photographs cannot; taken togdher, they reconstruct both synchronically and diachronically the complex network of social and economic relationships that have deter- reviews 157 mined how these photos were made, used, and exchanged. McGillivray's essay sets the historical stage upon which the modem drama of industrial Cape Breton takes place. He emphasizes the strong tradition of labor militancy in the area, where a largely homogeneous population dung to pre-industrial values long after the arrival of industrial capitaUsm in the late 19th century. It's necessary that McGUUvray provide this background, since strikes, unions, and the economic decline of the coal industry and the community are completely missing from the Shedden archive. But Mining Photographs would still be of only...