Thompson captured photos of the place — the hills of WVA folding into each other like origami, holding mist and dew in the hollows. And he staged new photos which conjure these working men, bearing up under hours of physical labor, covered in white dust, looking otherworldly but also fully human and integral to the achievement.
That observation made me wonder if there might not be something particularly “Shakespearean” about the Rust Belt, the arc of success and devastation, the clashing of all of those villainous characters during the Gilded Age and the nobility of those who resisted them, and the narrative culmination of the post-industrial landscape as blasted as Lear’s heath.
The center didn’t hold. Things fell apart. For the second time in its history, a faith was betrayed and the gates of Eden were soldered shut.
Touring the area my grandmother grew up, only a few hints of the coal mining history remain.
Inside the factories zinc fumes flushed out of horizontal retorts, and spread through the factories as an eerie blue powder.
A poem by Caleb Gill.
"I came from somewhere that has a lot of character and really fascinating people who have carved out really beautiful lives, and they don't fall easily into the caricatures that we see of rural Pennsylvanian people in the news."
Crayons were my birthright. Crayons were in my blood. The blood of family lore matched American Crayon’s most powerful primary red crayon in every box. Crayons sent me down the road to adulthood.
“Green space is an equity issue... Part of environmental justice is making sure that everyone has access to the outdoors. It's important for physical health, it's important for mental health, and it's not a luxury—it's a human right.”
A cut through the layers of America past and present in the historic steel town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Andy Warhol meets the Breatharians.
In Pennsylvania’s Oil Creek Valley, the messy legacy of the country’s first petroleum boom.