VIEWS OF THE VALLEY OF DESPAIR:  

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF JACK CORN AND MILTON ROGOVIN 

IN APPALACHIAN COAL COMMUNITIES (1956–1979)  

 
By 
 

Anthony Joseph Cepak 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A DISSERTATION  

Submitted to 

2020 

Michigan State University 

in partial fulfillment of the requirements 

for the degree of 

Information and Media—Doctor of Philosophy 

VIEWS OF THE VALLEY OF DESPAIR:  

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF JACK CORN AND MILTON ROGOVIN 

IN APPALACHIAN COAL COMMUNITIES (1956–1979)  

ABSTRACT 

 

 

 
By 
 

Anthony Joseph Cepak 

Through extensive archival research, oral history and ethnography, this dissertation 

examines the coal mining photographs of photojournalist Jack Corn, repositioning his work 

alongside the work of noted social documentarian Milton Rogovin as being important in 

reshaping the visual discourse of mining in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. This dissertation argues that 

Corn’s and Rogovin’s work in Appalachia disrupted coal mining discourses popular throughout 

the first half of the 20th-century by repositioning their subjects in a way that changed how 

society thought about mining. For Corn, the disruption in discourse came from repositioning his 

subjects from a perspective of celebrating the heroics of mining in the context of empire building 

to illustrating the devastating consequences of extracting coal from the Earth. Corn’s work was 

generated through a combination of assigned, commissioned and independent projects that led to 

the creation of a significant body of work. For Rogovin, his work repositioned miners from being 

a faceless commodity to the coal companies, anonymously working to support the nation’s vast 

industrial complex, to being individuals with unique identities that existed outside the confines of 

the mines in which they worked. By exploring the ways Corn and Rogovin disrupted popular 

mining discourse, this dissertation also challenges conventional notions that widespread 

documentation of the state of the environment in the United States began in the 1970s. Across 

the literature, the formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the 

agency’s Documerica project are often discussed as being the pivotal moment when 

photographic documentation of the environment began to illustrate the widespread effect of 

human activity on our physical world. This dissertation argues, however that, 

while Documerica was significant in creating a large and diverse archive of photographic 

evidence showing the effect industry was having on workers, family, public heath, and 

community, photographers such as Corn and Rogovin were approaching documentation from a 

similar perspective more than a decade before the project launched in 1971. While working 

at The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, Corn departed from documenting traditional 

narratives of miners at work to explore the socio-economic, environmental and public health 

aspects of mining while covering coal communities in Appalachia beginning in the 1950s. 

Heavily influenced by newspaper coverage of the struggles of miners, including coverage from 

Corn and The Tennessean, Rogovin headed to Appalachia in 1962 and commenced what would 

become one of his longest and most prolific projects: documenting miners, their families and 

their communities. Finally, this dissertation argues that through their photography Corn and 

Rogovin were participating in a form of activism with the images they made being more than just 

documentation, but a type of visual protest against the social and environmental conditions they 

encountered in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. In much the same way Margaret 

Bourke-White, for example, gave LIFE magazine readers their first glimpses of Apartheid 

through her photographs of South African gold miners in the 1950s, Corn and Rogovin gave 

Americans living outside Appalachia a visual introduction to the human cost of a nation’s 

growing energy consumption. 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright by 
ANTHONY JOSEPH CEPAK 
2020 

 

 

 

 

DEDICATION  

To my wife Stephanie, and daughters Morgan and Emerson, for their unwavering 

devotion and support through the highs and lows of completing a doctoral program. Words seem 
inadequate in expressing my gratitude for their grace, patience and encouragement.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

v 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

 
 

I need to thank Jack and Helen Corn, and their daughter Rosemarie Scott, for welcoming 

 
 

me into their homes and granting me access to materials. Their openness, kindness and support 

of my vision for this project made its completion possible. I also want to thank Sister Marie 

Cirilo for helping me better understand the Clear Fork Valley and its people. My ethnographic 

visit to the area would not have been as rich as it was without her guidance, knowledge and the 

introductions she provided to the people who call Clearfork, Eagan, Pruden, White Oak, the 

hollows and the hills home. Archival material played an important role in developing the 

interpretation of Jack Corn’s and Milton Rogovin’s work presented in this dissertation. I need to 

acknowledge the vital work of archivists in preserving, organizing and making available to the 

public materials that help us make sense of our history. Specifically, I would like to thank 

Curator of Special Collections Zach Johnson and Public Services Archivist Teresa Gray at the 

Vanderbilt University Libraries in Nashville, TN; archivist Edith A. Sandler at the manuscripts 

division of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.; and Holly Reed of the Still Picture 

Reference Team at the National Archives & Records Administration in College Park, MD—the 

knowledge and expertise of each of you were critical to the success of my data collection. All 

three of these archives are a tremendous resource, and the collections they house were essential 

in providing the primary sources materials evidentiary to arguments made throughout this 

dissertation. I am fortunate to have had the privilege of working with such a supportive and 

esteemed committee. The diverse perspectives and expertise of Professors Perry Parks, Eric 

Freedman, Judy Walgren and John Besley challenged me intellectually and helped me develop 

and focus the following inquiry. It has also been a privilege to work with and learn from my 

 

vi 

chair, mentor and friend Professor Howard Bossen. Through your firmness, compassion, 

constructive feedback and unrelenting support of my research I have learned to ask more specific 

questions of my research materials, become more thoughtful in my approach, and have become a 

better, more efficient, writer. You have helped me stay true to the research that is important to 

me. When others were pulling me in many different directions, you empowered me to forge my 

own path and guided me to become the educator and scholar I am today, and for that I am 

eternally grateful. I must thank the faculty and staff of the Knight Center for Environmental 

Journalism for their continued support throughout my graduate journey. I hope to continue a 

connection to this vital center for scholarship and journalism. Though not serving on my 

committee, I also want to acknowledge and thank Professors Lucinda Davenport and Serena 

Miller for their support and mentorship throughout both my master’s and Ph.D. I would also like 

the acknowledge the support of my friends and classmates; it has been a privilege to get to know 

you and grow with you over the past four years. Finally, thank you to the College of 

Communication Arts and Sciences and School of Journalism at Michigan State University for 

generously supporting my research through summer research and dissertation completion 

fellowships. Without this vital funding, the ethnographic and archival-intensive scholarship 

contained in this dissertation would not have been possible. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

vii 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 
 

 
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... x 
 
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................................. xviii 
 
INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 
 
CHAPTER 1: UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY: THE 
AESTHEICS AND 
DISCOURSE OF IMAGES ............................................................................................................ 8  

DOING ARCHIVAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD WORK TO INFORM 
PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS ................................................................................................. 9 
CRITICIZING PHOTOGRAPHS: UNDERSTANDING MEANING THROUGH 
AESTHETICS........................................................................................................................... 25 
DISCOURSE AND IMAGES: DERIVING MEANING FROM WHAT IS SEEN AND NOT 
SEEN IN PHOTOGTAPHS ..................................................................................................... 31 
MEANING AND POWER: TWO PERSPECTIVES OF APPROACH .................................. 36 
PLACE AS A SITE OF DISCURSIVE MEANING-MAKING .............................................. 38 
THE ROLE OF IDENTITY IN DISCURSIVE PRODUCTION OF REPRESENTATION ... 41 
 

CHAPTER 2: BUILDING THE EMPIRE AND ENVISIONING HEROICS: DISCOURSE 
AND AESTHETICS OF MINING (1868–1977)  ........................................................................ 44 

SEEING THE SCENE: SURVEY WORK AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLONIAL 
CONTEXTS .............................................................................................................................. 45 
MINING AND PHOTOGRAPHY: HISTORIES INTERTWINED ........................................ 53 
THE IMPORTANCE OF COAL TO SOCIETY: FROM HEATING AND THE ELECTRIC 
LIGHT TO TRANSPORTATION AND INDUSTRY ............................................................. 58 
 

CHAPTER 3: POWER, PLACE AND POVERTY: THE CONSTRUCTION OF 
APPALACHIA AS A GEO-CULTURAL CONCEPT ................................................................ 67 
THE EFFECTS OF GEOLOGY ON GEOGRAPHY .............................................................. 68 
HISTORICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF RURAL APPALACHIA ...................................... 84 
THE EXPLOITIVE CONVERSION OF THE MOUNTAINEER TO PROLETARIAN ....... 86 
APPALACHIA THROUGH DEPRESSION AND WAR ....................................................... 91 
 

CHAPTER 4: MAKING A MODEL VALLEY: EXAMINING THE POWER OF 
INSTITUTIONS THROUGH APPARATUSES USED BY THE CORPORATION, ACTIVISTS 
AND MEDIA IN ADVANCING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL 
AGENDAS (1920–1970) ............................................................................................................ 109 
A SUBJECTIVE COMPLACENCY: THE RISE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN THE U.S. 111 
THE POLITICIZATION OF POVERTY AND POLLUTION .............................................. 116 
CONVERGENCE OF CULTURES: YOUNG JOURNALISTS AND A CRITICAL PRESS
................................................................................................................................................. 122 

 

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FUELING THE COLD WAR: LABOR, COAL AND COMMUNISM IN THE AGE OF 
ACTIVISM ............................................................................................................................. 131 
“THEY LOOKED ONLY TO GOD TO GIVE THEM IN THE NEXT WORLD ALL THAT 
WAS YEARNED FOR IN THIS ONE”: APPALACHIAN RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN 
THE 1960S AND 70S ............................................................................................................. 148 

 
CHAPTER 5: INSPIRING A VIEW OF APPALACHIA: GREAT DEPRESSION ERA 
PHOTOGRAPHY FROM WALKER EVANS TO RUSSELL LEE ......................................... 161 
THE TRADITION OF SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY WORK ............................................... 162 
WALKER EVANS ................................................................................................................. 164 
PAUL STRAND ..................................................................................................................... 171 
RUSSELL LEE ....................................................................................................................... 174 
INFLUENCES IN PLAY: CONTRASTING GENRES AND CONTRASTING 
APPROACHES TO DOCUMENTARY WORK ................................................................... 180 

 
CHAPTER 6: THE POSTMISSTRESS PAVED THE WAY: AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE 
AND GAINING ACCESS TO SUBJECTS IN ISOLATED COMMUNITIES ........................ 192 

THE VIEW FROM THE BALCONY DEPENDS ON THE VIEWER: EXPLORING 
INSIDER VERSUS OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVES IN DOCUMENTARY WORK ............ 194 
AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE OF APPALACHIA .................................................................. 196 
ACCESS AND INTIMACY: DEVELOPING SUBJECT RELATIONSHIPS ..................... 217 
AUDIENCE AND MEANING: UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCE IN THE SITE OF 
CIRCULATION ..................................................................................................................... 222 
 

CHAPTER 7: VISUALIZING THE ENVIRONMENT: THE EPA’S DOCUMERICA AND 
THE LASTING LEGACY OF A PROJECT THAT FAILED TO LIVE UP TO ITS PROMISE 
..................................................................................................................................................... 237 
THE DAWN OF A NEW DECADE, AND DAWN OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ERA .. 239 
VISUALITIES AND NATURE: THE AESTHETIC OF ENVIRONMENTALISM ............ 242 
RESURRECTION OF THE GOVERNMENT PHOTGRAPHIC SURVEY: DOCUMERICA
................................................................................................................................................. 246 
THE AMERICAN COAL MINER ......................................................................................... 256 
 

CHAPTER 8: VIEWS OF A MODEL VALLEY:REFLECTING ON AESTHETICS OF HOPE, 
DESPAIR, AND ENVIROMENTALISM IN PHOTOGRAPHS OF APPALACHIAN COAL 
FIELDS (1956–1977) ................................................................................................................. 261 
DISRUPTING THE COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF KING COAL ...................................... 263 
AESTEHTICS, ADVOCACY AND ACTIVISM IN APPALACHIA .................................. 266 
SHOWING THE NEED FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION ............................................. 272 
CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 274 
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 279 
 
 

 

ix 

LIST OF FIGURES 

 
 
 
 
Figure 1. Blue-Eyed Marys at Corn home in Goodlettsville, TN, Jack Corn, date unknown ...... 10 
 
Figure 2. Jack Corn manuscript page and contact sheet in the special collections reading room at 

Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Anthony 
Cepak, 2019. ......................................................................................................................... 13 

 
Figure 3. Jack Corn manuscript page at Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt 

University, Nashville, TN. and binder page at Corn home in Goodlettsville, TN. Anthony 
Cepak, 2019. ......................................................................................................................... 13 

 
Figure 4. Family photo on living room wall, Marie Cirillo home, Eagan, TN. Anthony Cepak, 

2019....................................................................................................................................... 16 

 
Figure 5. “Ethnographic Tools,” researchers field notes, pen, audio recorder and camera and coal 
specimens on table in Nashville apartment. During tour of the Clear Fork Valley with Marie 
Cirillo earlier in the day, these two pieces of coal fell from a truck taking over burden to a 
holding pond. Cirillo suggested we stop and pick them up. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ............ 18 

 
Figure 6. Abandoned Main Street, Clairfield, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. .................................. 19 
 
Figure 7. Overgrown lot, former site of the U.S. Post Office and postmaster’s house, Clairfield, 

TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ................................................................................................... 20 

 
Figure 8. “Old service station,” Eagan, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ............................................ 21 
 
Figure 9. “Former Union Hall,” Clairfield, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ...................................... 22 
 
Figure 10. “Union Hall,” Two men stand outside the Union Hall in Clairfield, TN. Jack Corn, 

1957–1978............................................................................................................................. 23 

 
Figure 11. Family of Miners, Scotland. Milton Rogovin, 1982. .................................................. 26 
 
Figure 12. Procter Reagan and his son Terry stand outside their home in the Dogwalk community 

in Fentress County, Tenn. He is staring at two reporters who have just walked up the hill 
with his son Charles, who had been held in a Nashville jail for months without any charges 
being filed. Jack Corn, 1957. ................................................................................................ 28 

 
Figure 13. Jack Corn contact sheet showing approach to Reagan house in rural Fentress County, 
TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ................................................................................................... 30 

 

 

x 

Figure 14. Jack Corn contact sheet showing celebration after initial interaction. Anthony Cepak, 
2019....................................................................................................................................... 30 

 
Figure 15. 2008 Boundary Map of the Appalachian Region from the Appalachian Regional 

Commission. ......................................................................................................................... 40 

 
Figure 16. Frontispiece of The Fortieth Parallel survey report Vol.1, Systematic Geology. 

“Natural Column – Washakie Bad-Lands, Wyoming,” Julian Bien, 1878. .......................... 46 

 
Figure 17. “Mt. Agassiz, Uinta Mts [Utah],” T. H. O’Sullivan, 1869. ......................................... 48 
 
Figure 18. “Gold Hill, Nevada,” T. H. O’Sullivan, 1867. ............................................................ 49 
 
Figure 19. “Cars coming out of shaft, Savage Mine,” T.H. O’Sullivan, 1868. ............................ 55 
 
Figure 20. “Young Driver in Mine,” Brown, West Virginia. Lewis Hine, 1908. ......................... 57 
 
Figure 21. President Grant and the Emperor of Brazil starting the great Corliss Engine in 

Machinery Hall. Harper’s Weekly, March 27, 1867. ........................................................... 59 

 
Figure 22. “Fuel conservation,” Howard Lieberman, 1942. ......................................................... 61 
 
Figure 23. “West mine, west frankfort, illinois,” Arthur Rothstein, 1939. ................................... 62 
 
Figure 24. “Ruins of Franco Coal Company No. 1 mine, Steritz, Illinois,” Arthur Rothstein, 

1939....................................................................................................................................... 63 

 
Figure 25. “Coaling the Pacific Mail S.S. “Siberia” at the fortified naval station of Nagasaki, 

Japan,” Underwood & Underwood, 1904. ............................................................................ 66 

 
Figure 26. “Coaling the “Leviathian”, Brest, France,” Unknown, May 30, 1918. ....................... 66 
 
Figure 27. Figure of Geologic Structures, “Guide to the Geology along the Interstate Highways 

in Tennessee,” Robert Lake Wilson, Tennessee Division of Geology, 1981. ...................... 71 

 
Figure 28. “View from Cumberland Plateau near Monteagle, Tennessee,” Marion Post Wolcott, 
1939....................................................................................................................................... 72 

 
Figure 29. “Cager, B. Hendrickson,” unknown, 1908. ................................................................. 75 
 
Figure 30. “Miner with coal Driller,” Jack Corn, 1968. ............................................................... 77 
 
Figure 31. “Roof driller, Grundy Co., TN,” Jack Corn, 1968. ..................................................... 78 
 
Figure 32. Jack Corn’s Nikon FM2 with motorized film drive, Vanderbilt University Special 

Collections. ........................................................................................................................... 80 

 

xi 

Figure 33. “Teague and donkey, Doghole mine,” Jack Corn, 1964. ............................................ 81 
 
Figure 34. “Miner holding lump of coal,” Jack Corn, 1964. ........................................................ 83 
 
Figure 35. “Sam McCoy’s grave in KY,” Sam McCoy of the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud is 
buried on a hillside overlooking Tomkinsville, KY. Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ...................... 88 

 
Figure 36. “Old Coal Company Town of Red Ash, Virginia, near Richards in Tazewell County,” 

Jack Corn, Documerica, 1974. Original caption reads: Old Coal Company Town of Red 
Ash, Virginia, near Richards in Tazewell County in the Southwestern Part of the State. This 
Is a Classic Picture of a Company Town with a Railroad in the Valley Flanked by Miners’ 
Homes. The Coal Mine Superintendent’s Home Is Up the Hill in the Upper Left Portion of 
the Picture. The Separation Is Symbolic of the Caste System Which Once Rule (sic) in the 
Mining Towns, But Which Is Now in the Process of Change. The Road Is Made of Red 
Dog, a Mining Byproduct. .................................................................................................... 90 

 
Figure 37. “Miners’ children going home from store and post office, Omar, West Virginia,” 

Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. .................................................................................................. 93 

 
Figure 38. “Haystacks and shocks of corn in field near Marion, Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott 

1941....................................................................................................................................... 94 

 
Figure 39. Coal miners card gambling Saturday afternoon on porch of company store, Chaplin, 

West Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. ........................................................................ 94 

 
Figure 40. “Miners often give haircuts on front porch. The “Patch,” Chaplin, West Virginia,” 

Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. .................................................................................................. 95 

 
Figure 41. “Coal miner and two of his seven children. He has worked in the mines for about 

twenty years. Chaplin, West Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. ................................... 97 

 
Figure 42. “Coal miner’s wife (note goiter) and two children. Chaplin, West Virginia,” Marion 

Post Wolcott, 1938. ............................................................................................................... 98 

 
Figure 43. Painting by Haddon Sundblom (left), and its use in a 1937 Coca-Cola advertising 

poster. .................................................................................................................................. 100 

 
Figure 44. Coal miner (Italian) resting and smoking his pipe after coming home from work. “The 
Patch,” Chaplin, West Virginia. Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. ............................................ 101 

 
Figure 45. Inside cover of Jack Delano’s first album of miners from Schuylkill county, 1938. 105 
 
Figure 46. Inside pages showing contrasting views of mining operation from album 2, Jack 

Delano, 1938. ...................................................................................................................... 105 

 

 

xii 

Figure 47. President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes the hand of one of the residents of Appalachia as 
Agent Rufus Youngblood  (far left) looks on. LBJ Library photo by Cecil Stoughton, 1964.
............................................................................................................................................. 120 

 
Figure 48. President Lyndon Johnson’s visit to Tom Fletcher’s home in Kentucky was part of his 

tour of poverty-stricken areas in the U.S. (Photo by Walter Bennett/Time & Life 
Pictures/Getty Images). 1964. ............................................................................................. 120 

 
Figure 49. Thousands attend a rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington 

on April 17, 1965, to hear Ernest Gruening, a Democratic senator from Alaska, and other 
speakers discuss U.S. policy in Vietnam. The rally followed picketing of the White House 
by students demanding an end to Vietnam fighting. Charles Tasnadi/AP ......................... 123 

 
Figure 50. Abandoned truck on strip mine ruins on king mt in Clarified, TN. Jack Corn, 1969.

............................................................................................................................................. 125 

 
Figure 51. Land slide down to road and R.R. below, Campbell Co., TN. Jack Corn, 1969. ...... 127 
 
Figure 52. Aerial of strip-mined mountain in Campbell Co., TN. Jack Corn, 1969. ................. 128 
 
Figure 53. “Iguana Seller,” from the series, “Early Mexico.” Milton Rogovin, 1953–1961. .... 136 
 
Figure 54. Buffalo Evening News, Friday, October 4, 1957. ..................................................... 138 
 
Figure 55. Brochure Cover, “Dig We Must!–Into the Coal Operators’ Profits!” Coal Commission 
of the  Communist Party, U.S.A., 1970. ............................................................................. 140 

 
Figure 56. Magazine Cover, “United Mine Workers Journal.” United Mineworkers of America, 

May 1974. ........................................................................................................................... 142 

 
Figure 57. Coal Tipple Sketch, 6 x 9 inches. Milton Rogovin, West Virginia, 1962. ................ 144 
 
Figure 58. Neighborhood Sketch, 6 x 9 inches. Milton Rogovin, Raleigh County, West Virginia, 
1962..................................................................................................................................... 145 

 
Figure 59. Building Demolition Sketch, 6 x 9 inches. Milton Rogovin, Gary, West Virginia, 

1962..................................................................................................................................... 146 

 
Figure 60. Church For Sale Sketch, 5 x 8 inches. Milton Rogovin, West Virginia, 1969. ......... 147 
 
Figure 61. Branding Elements from Model Valley reports and proposal. Appalachia 

Development Institute, 1969. .............................................................................................. 149 

 
Figure 62. The Tennessean, Section B “Today’s World” cover. Feb. 2, 1964. .......................... 151 
 
Figure 63. “Buffalo School, kids at pump, Clairfield,” Jack Corn, 1961. .................................. 152 

 

xiii 

Figure 64. “Stripmine landslide,” Jack Corn, 1969. ................................................................... 154 
 
Figure 65. “Huddleston farm with strip mine overburden,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ................. 155 
 
Figure 66. Strip Mining Graphic from “The Greening of West Virginia. ”West Virginia Surface 

Mining & Reclamation Association. ................................................................................... 156 

 
Figure 67. Strip Mining Graphic from “Energy and the Environment: What’s The Strip Mine 

Controversy About?.” Surface Mining Research Mining Library in Charleston, West 
Virginia. .............................................................................................................................. 156 

 
Figure 68. “Clairfield pallet factory dedication,” Jack Corn, 1972. ........................................... 159 
 
Figure 69. Untitled, from Appalachia Series, Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. .............................. 159 
 
Figure 70. “Alabama Tenant Farmer,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936. .............. 166 
 
Figure 71. “Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936. ..... 167 
 
Figure 72. “Kitchen Corner, Tenant Farmhouse,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936.

............................................................................................................................................. 168 

 
Figure 73. “Chicken Coop on Floyd Burroughs’ Farm,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 

1936..................................................................................................................................... 169 

 
Figure 74. Cover Artwork, “A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry,” United States 
Department of the Interior, 1947. ....................................................................................... 176 

 
Figure 75. “Harry Fain, coal loader,” Wheelwright, Floyd County, KY. Russell Lee, 1946. .... 178 
 
Figure 76. “A miner,” Lejunior, Harlan County, KY. Russell Lee, 1947. ................................. 179 
 
Figure 77. “Working People, Markel Electric,” Buffalo, New York. Milton Rogovin, 1979–1980.
............................................................................................................................................. 183 

 
Figure 78. Appalachian miner and wife. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. ..................................... 184 
 
Figure 79. Snow covered houses, railroad tracks and creek in Clairfield, Tennessee. Jack Corn, 

1964..................................................................................................................................... 186 

 
Figure 80. “Daughter of migrant in doorway of trailer, Sebastian, Texas.” Photograph by Russell 
Lee, 1939. ............................................................................................................................ 187 

 
Figure 81. Three Marlowe children stand in doorway of cabin. This photograph was used by LBJ 
as part of a speech to  launch the Appalachian War on Poverty. Jack Corn, 1963. ............ 188 

 

 

xiv 

Figure 82. Photograph of a contact sheet from a 1963 Jack Corn photoshoot in Clear Fork 

Valley, Tennessee. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ......................................................................... 190 

 
Figure 83. “Big rock at Clairfield, TN,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ............................................... 199 
 
Figure 84. “Family members wait for survivors to be rescued,” Jack Corn, 1965. .................... 200 
 
Figure 85. “Louise Adams with covered graves,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ................................ 202 
 
Figure 86. “Two women at grave decoration,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ..................................... 202 
 
Figure 87. “Fiddle player with child in door,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ...................................... 204 
 
Figure 88. “J. Hatfield quilting at home,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ............................................. 204 
 
Figure 89. The Ugly Mark of Strip Mining, 8 ½ x 11 inches. The Tennessean, Nashville, TN. 

Sept. 12, 1971. .................................................................................................................... 207 

 
Figure 90. Untitled Helen, West Virginia. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. .................................. 209 
 
Figure 91. Untitled, Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. ..................................................................... 211 
 
Figure 92. “The Family, Luzzara, Italy,” Paul Strand, 1953. ..................................................... 212 
 
Figure 93. Appalachian miner from “Family of Miners” series. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987.  215 
 
Figure 94. Czechoslovakian miner from “Family of Miners” series. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987.
............................................................................................................................................. 216 

 
Figure 95. “Appalachian Boy,” Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. ................................................... 219 
 
Figure 96. Gallery Exhibit Preview Invitation. Milton Rogovin’s “Appalachia,” Sept. 30, 1972.

............................................................................................................................................. 224 

 
Figure 97. Aerial of strip-mined mountain in Campbell Co., TN. Jack Corn, ca. 1969. ............ 225 
 
Figure 98. Untitled  from “My Land is Dying.” Milton Rogovin, 1972. .................................... 226 
 
Figure 99. Untitled  from “My Land is Dying.” Milton Rogovin, 1972. .................................... 227 
 
Figure 100. Front page of Wednesday, May 26, 1965, The Tennessean newspaper, Nashville, 

TN. ...................................................................................................................................... 229 

 
Figure 101. “East Tennessee miner,” Jack Corn, 1965. .............................................................. 231 
 

 

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Figure 102. Sheriff Jack Laxton administers oxygen to rescue worker Edker Hunnicutt. Jack 

Corn, 1965........................................................................................................................... 232 

 
Figure 103. Marie Cirillo looks at Jack Corn’s framed photographs of the Clear Fork Valley on 

display at the Clear Fork Community Institute. Eagan, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. ......... 234 

 
Figure 104. U.S. President Richard Nixon (left) after signing the National Environmental Policy 
Act, Jan. 1, 1970. Photographer Unknown, Richard Nixon Library. ................................. 240 

 
Figure 105. Screenshots of the Keep American Beautiful, 1971 Public Service Announcement 

campaign. ............................................................................................................................ 244 

 
Figure 106. 71 things you can do to stop pollution brochure produced by Keep America 

Beautiful and the Ad Council, 1971. .................................................................................. 244 

 
Figure 107. Jack Corn’s 1973 proposal for the Documerica project. Anthony Cepak, 2019. .... 248 
 
Figure 108. Jack Corn’s 1974 assignment notes on branded Documerica notebook. Anthony 

Cepak, 2019. ....................................................................................................................... 249 

 
Figure 109. Ed Marlowe crippled in a coal mine roof fall stares out his window. Portrait of 

President John Kennedy in chair. Jack Corn, 1969. ........................................................... 251 

 
Figure 110. Ken Hatfield, 74, of Newton, West Virginia, near Charleston, in Mingo County. A 

World War II Veteran, He Began Working in the Mines at 18 and Was Employed 
Underground at Least 30 Years. A Sick Man, He Has Lost One Leg. He Receives $78 a 
Month in Social Security. Jack Corn, 1974. ....................................................................... 251 

 
Figure 111. “Huddlestons on porch” Jim, Steele and Pauline Huddleston on porch of their 

mountain cabin.  Jack Corn, 1957–1978. ............................................................................ 253 

 
Figure 112. Coal City Club in Coal City, West Virginia, a Part of Beckley All of the Men Are 

Coal Miners. Note That Some of Them Are “Hunkering Down” Rather Than Sitting. This Is 
a Familiar Stance to All Miners Who Use This Posture in the Mine Shafts Which Have Low 
Ceilings. Jack Corn, 1974. .................................................................................................. 253 

 
Figure 113. Miner Robert Davis greets his daughter, Mrs. Katherine Cook, and grandchildren 

after work in Man, W. Va. Jack Corn 1978. ....................................................................... 257 

 
Figure 114. Dr. Abdul Dahhan specializes in pulmonary medicine. A native of Syria, he has 
practiced in this country for the past 12 years. He is a member of the staff of the Daniel 
Boone Clinic in Harlan, Ky. Jack Corn, 1978. ................................................................... 258 

 
Figure 115. Postcard “Slate Pickers Anthracite Coal Mining, Scranton, PA.,” 1906. ............... 264 
 

 

xvi 

Figure 116. “Boy dances on porch, Clairfield School,” Clairfield, Tennessee. Jack Corn, 1964.

............................................................................................................................................. 268 

 
Figure 117. Sketch of a disabled miner at a black lung meeting in West Virginia. Milton 

Rogovin, 1970. .................................................................................................................... 270 

 
Figure 118. Original Caption: Jack Smith, 42, Rhodell, West Virginia, Seated in the Beer Joint 

He Operates in a Wheel-Chair (sic) Bought for Him by His Friend Arnold Miller, President 
of the United Mine Workers Union. He Was Disabled at Age 21 after a Year in the Mines 
and Had to Wait 18 Years to Collect Workman’s Compensation. He Stays Current on Union 
Affairs and Will Man a Picket Line. During the Strike for Black Lung Benefits His Wife 
Wheeled Him in Front of a Train to Stop It. Jack Corn, 1974. ........................................... 271 

 
Figure 119. Plague doctor Corona Virus meme. Imgflip.com, 2020. ......................................... 276 
 
Figure 120. Medical staff transfer patients to hospital in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 17, 2020. 

GETTY IMAGES. .............................................................................................................. 277 

 
Figure 121. Venetian Doctor during the time of the plague. Pen, ink and watercolor on paper. 
Grevenbroeck Jan van Museo Correr (1731–1807). The Bridgeman Art Library, Venice, 
Italy. .................................................................................................................................... 278 

 

 

 

xvii 

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 

 

 
 
 
ACA – Appalachian Cultural Association 

ADI – Appalachia Development Institute 

AIZ – Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung 

BTU – British Thermal Unit 

CCCP – Coal Commission of the Communist Party, U.S.A.  

CCDP – Clear Fork Community Development Project 

CWA – Clean Water Act 

DNM – Dinosaur National Monument 

DRD – Department of Rural Development  

EPA – Environmental Protection Agency 

FSA– Farm Security Administration 

HUAC – House Committee on Un-American Activities  

IDC – Industrial Development Council 

KAB – Keep America Beautiful 

LOC  – Library of Congress 

MPW – Missouri Photography Workshop  

MVHC – Model Valley Health Council  

NARA – National Archives and Records Administration  

NCLC – National Child Labor Committee  

NELA – National Electric Light Association 

NEPA – National Environmental Policy Act 

 

xviii 

ORNL – Oak Ridge National Laboratory 

PSA – Public Service Announcement 

PRC – public relation council  

SDS – Students for a Democratic Society  

SLU – Southern Labor Union  

TVA – Tennessee Valley Authority 

SotE – State of the Environment 

SEJ – Society of Environmental Journalists 

TCWP – Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning 

US – United States (of America) 

USGS – United States Geologic Survey 

SOCM – Save Our Cumberland Mountains  

WOE – What on Earth 

WPA – Works Progress Administration 

 

 

 

 
 

 

xix 

INTRODUCTION 

 “We finally ended the war on coal, and I’m proud to report that Corsa Coal,  

here with us today, just opened a brand-new coal mine  

in the State of Pennsylvania, the first one in many, many years.” 

 

— Donald J. Trump  

 

On a hot, cloudy afternoon in June 2017, President Donald J. Trump stood on a platform 

 

 

in front of a blue backdrop with “Unleashing American Energy” in large white type and 

announced his administration’s new energy policy. In the context of ongoing organized 

international efforts to combat the effects of climate change, the policy he announced signaled a 

reversal in the commitments previous U.S. administrations had made to address the crisis. 

Suggesting that energy industries, coal in particular, had experienced “eight years of hell” under 

the administration of President Barack Obama, Trump boasted a goal of not just energy 

independence, but global dominance.1 The president’s vision for energy dominance positions 

coal mining and other forms of extraction, such as fracking, leading the way forward. In addition 

to announcing his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, the 

president’s remarks also announced the rolling back, or elimination, of dozens of environmental 

regulations related to air quality, emission standards, and extraction that affect mining companies 

such as Corsa Coal, whose executives shared the platform with the president during the speech.2  

The president’s remarks possessed undertones of historical discourses related to coal 

mining that celebrated extraction as being vital to the nation’s interest.3,4 The speech 

romanticizes a time when coal’s abundance made it the only economically viable major source of 

 

1 Trump, 2017  
2 Trump, 2017 
3 Wadleigh, 1921 
4 Freese, 2016 

 

1 

energy in the United States.5 Discourses that celebrated the heroics of the industry in empire 

building date back more than a century to the 1860s when large geological surveys of the 

American West reimagined the frontier lands. The surveys transformed the view industrialists 

and entrepreneurial pioneers possessed of the West from being an untenable wild to being a 

landscape rich in minerals and opportunity.6,7 The president’s use of these discourses make 

exploration of how, why, and when the discourse around coal production began to change timely 

and relevant in contemporary society. This dissertation examines the coal mining photographs of 

photojournalist Jack Corn, repositioning his work alongside the work of noted social 

documentarian Milton Rogovin as being important in contributing to the visual discourse of 

mining in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The works of these two photographers exist in concert with 

one another; aesthetically different but interconnected by time, place and subject, they work to 

create a rich and powerful narrative. Together, their work looks outside the darkened shafts of 

subterranean coal mines to show, first, how the violence of extracting this abundant resource 

reaches beyond the miners doing the work to affect their families, former miners, and non-miner 

members of Appalachian communities; and, second, the devastating and irreversible effects of 

mining on the region’s landscape.  

Trump’s comments in 2017 and other public events have reignited a debate about the 

future of coal in U.S. energy that began more than a half-century ago. Addressing labor leaders 

in the crowd, the president said, “Your workers embody the skill, grit and courage that has 

always been the true source of American strength. They are great people. They break through 

rock walls, mine the depths of the earth, and reach through the ocean floor, to bring every ounce 

 

5 Freese, 2016 
6 King, 1878 
7 Trachtenberg, 1989 

 

2 

of energy into our homes and commerce and into our lives.”8 These remarks resurrect historical 

discourses popular through the first half of the 20th century that celebrate coal as not only 

plentiful and viable, but the main resource essential for U.S. energy production. While this claim 

may have historically been accurate, technology has advanced—making contemporary 

dependence on coal for energy production obsolete and no longer economically, environmentally 

or socially viable. Corn’s and Rogovin’s photographs in tandem with the environmental 

movement changed coal discourse over the past six decades. Beginning in the 1960s, the coal-

centric discourse evoked in the president’s remarks has been replaced by messages that support 

energy diversification and production from cleaner, more renewable sources like wind and solar, 

which aim to reduce the practice of burning coal and other carbon dioxide-emitting fossil fuels.  

This dissertation argues that Corn’s and Rogovin’s work in Appalachia disrupted coal 

mining discourses popular throughout the first half of the 20th-century by repositioning their 

subjects in a way that changed how society would think of mining. The discourses Corn’s and 

Rogovin’s work disrupted are the same discourses used by Trump at the 2017 policy 

announcement, and at campaign rallies in coal producing regions. For Corn, the disruption in 

discourse came from repositioning his subjects from a perspective of celebrating the heroics of 

the technology and industry of mining in building the empire, to illustrating the devastating 

consequences of extracting coal from the Earth. Corn’s work is the result of assigned, 

commissioned and independent projects that led to the creation of a significant body of work. For 

Rogovin, his work repositioned miners from being a faceless commodity to the coal companies, 

anonymously working to support the nation’s vast industrial complex, to being individuals with 

unique identities who exist outside the confines of the mines in which they worked.  

8 Trump, 2017 

 

 

3 

In addition to arguing that Corn and Rogovin disrupted popular mining discourse, this 

dissertation also challenges conventional notions that widespread documentation of the state of 

the environment in the United States began in the 1970s. Across the literature, the formation of 

the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the agency’s Documerica project are often 

discussed as being the pivotal moment when photographic documentation of the environment 

really began to illustrate the widespread effect of human activity on our physical 

world.9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 This dissertation argues, however, that, while Documerica was significant 

in creating a large and diverse archive of photographic evidence showing the effect industry was 

having on workers, family, public heath, and community, photographers such as Corn and 

Rogovin were approaching documentation from a similar perspective more than a decade before 

the project launched in 1971. While working at The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, Corn 

departed from documenting traditional narratives of miners at work to explore the socio-

economic, environmental and public health aspects of mining while covering coal communities 

in Appalachia beginning in the 1950s. Heavily influenced by newspaper coverage of the 

struggles of miners, including coverage from Corn and The Tennessean, Rogovin headed to 

Appalachia in 1962 and commenced what would become one of his longest and most prolific 

projects, documenting miners, their families and their communities.  

Finally, this dissertation argues that through their photographs Corn and Rogovin were 

activists, and the images they made were a type of visual protest against the social and 

 

9 Freese, 2016 
10 Neuzil, 2008 
11 Rome, 2003 
12 Langston, 2018 
13 Bustard, 2013 
14 Shubinski, 2009 
15 Wellum, 2017 
16 Tanczo, 1987 
 

 

4 

environmental conditions they encountered in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. In much 

the same way Margaret Bourke-White, for example, gave LIFE magazine readers their first 

glimpses of Apartheid through her photographs of South African gold miners in the 1950s, Corn 

and Rogovin gave Americans living outside Appalachia a visual introduction to the human cost 

of a nation’s growing energy consumption. 

These arguments are organized around three central questions that explore the creation of 

these bodies of visually discursive work. First, in investigating the work of repositioning miners 

as subjects, this dissertation addresses the following question: In what ways did Corn’s and 

Rogovin’s photographs challenge and disrupt coal mining discourse in the 1950s and 60s? 

Additional questions related to this line of inquiry include: How was mining visually represented 

historically? What effect did advancements in photographic technology have on how mining was 

photographed? And what did historical representations discursively contribute to understanding 

the role of miners and the function of mining in society?  

 Second, were there specific characteristics, factors or conditions unique to the 

Appalachian region at the time Corn and Rogovin worked there that could have made the 

production of these photographs possible and aesthetically and discursively different from 

photographs of coal mining in other regions? Through this line of investigation, this dissertation 

also explores other influences that might have shaped the work of Corn and Rogovin in 

Appalachia. Both photographers worked in isolated environments; what effects could their 

positioning as outsiders have on their approach to developing relationships with their subjects? 

While their work is connected by topic and proximity of site of production, these were two very 

different photographers, and it is essential to understand their differences. How might differences 

in their approach affect the images they created and the nature of how their photographs were 

 

5 

used? How could understanding their audiences affect the possible discourse of their images? 

For Corn, it is critical to understand to what effect being assigned, being commissioned, or being 

self-directed to produce a project may have had on the intimacy and aesthetic quality achieved in 

his work. For Rogovin, understanding what initially drove him to document the life of miners is 

essential in understanding how his work in Appalachia is situated among his subsequent work of 

miners in Europe, Asia, South Africa, Mexico and Cuba and his other social documentary 

projects that focus on people and work.  

 The last central question this dissertation is organized around is: what was the 

relationship between Corn’s and Rogovin’s practice of photography and the culture of activism 

that arose in the 1960s around civil rights, the Vietnam War, women’s rights and the 

environment? Activism being a concerted effort within and against established structures of 

power to provoke change, on a more nuanced level this line of questioning also interrogates the 

role of institutional power in the production of photographic discourse. How did institutional 

apparatuses, such as newsgathering at The Tennessean newspaper or governmental enforcement 

of regulations, affect the visual discourse of mining in Appalachia? How did the power of local 

gatekeepers such as union leaders or mine management, or public officials who provided these 

photographers access to their subjects, affect the visual discourse of mining in Appalachia? 

Finally, how did the informational campaigns produced by the coal companies and unions affect 

the visual discourse of mining in Appalachia? 

Within the context of the three main arguments made in this dissertation these questions 

will be discussed across the following eight chapters: Chapter one will discuss how discourse 

theory combined with photographic criticism will be applied to assign meaning to Corn’s and 

Rogovin’s Appalachia photographs. In addition to setting up a framework for the discursive 

 

6 

analysis of their work, the photographs and materials used in this dissertation will be discussed 

along with the archives they were collected from. Working to inform the argument that Corn and 

Rogovin disrupted mining discourse, chapter two provides an overview of historical visual 

mining narratives and how they evolved between the 1850s with the California Gold Rush and 

the labor movement in the 1920s. Chapter three will examine Appalachia as a place, and within 

the context of Foucauldian notions of power, discuss the characteristics of the region as 

particulars that influence the production of visual discourse. Power exerted through institutional 

apparatuses will be explored in chapter four through the intersecting contexts of photography and 

activism relating to race, gender, poverty, war and the environment. Chapters five and six re-

examine Appalachia in the context of the long-term picture-making projects of Corn and 

Rogovin, addressing questions focusing on their influences and approaches to gaining access and 

developing relationships with their subjects. Chapter seven will examine government sanctioned 

projects that use photography as part of a broader effort to create archives of visual evidence. 

The photographic work commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s will be 

compared and contrasted to the EPA’s Documerica project and the President’s Report on the 

Coal Mining Industry (1978–1982).  Lastly, chapter eight will reflect on the arguments made 

throughout this dissertation and discuss the importance of Corn’s and Rogovin’s photographs in 

contemporary contexts.   

 

7 

UNDERSTANDING THE WORLD THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY: 

THE AESTHEICS AND DISCOURSE OF IMAGES 

CHAPTER 1 

 

 

 

“For the first time, I realized I had taken a different kind of picture. I followed my  
own instincts, and instead of taking a traditional news photograph, I had taken a  
symbolic image to tell the story. I still consider this photograph the universal  

portrait of that time, documenting the mountain people’s lifestyle.” 

—  Jack Corn  

 

Jack Corn wrote the above passage about his first visit to Appalachia in 1957. As an 

aesthetic object, the portrait he made during that visit of Procter Reagan and his son Terry 

outside their family home in Fentress County, Tennessee, has meaning. It has meaning as an 

artistic representation of the time, place and people Corn thoughtfully and skillfully placed 

before his camera. It also has meaning through the way he discusses the photograph and the 

context of its creation. Approaching photographic meaning from the perspective of aesthetic 

objects and context of creation is the foundation of how photographs will be analyzed and 

discussed in the following dissertation. This chapter serves three main purposes. First, this 

chapter introduces the primary source materials used for analysis. This introduction includes a 

discussion of the archives and ethnographic activities used to collect the primary source 

materials. Second, it creates a framework of photographic criticism and critical discourse 

analysis methodology and discusses how this framework will be used to arrive at an 

understanding of Corn and Milton Rogovin’s photographs of Appalachian coal fields. Finally, 

this chapter will serve as an overview—outlining how the evidence and discussions contained in 

the following chapters support the arguments central to this dissertation.  

 

 

8 

DOING ARCHIVAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD WORK TO INFORM 
PHOTOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS 

The three arguments presented over the following eight chapters were developed out of 

extensive archival work, collection of oral history and ethnographic field work. These activities 

were carried out during three separate field excursions between June and November 2019. Oral 

histories and written first-person accounts of picture-making activities give photographers a 

voice outside of their photographs.17 First-person accounts related to the production of specific 

images reveal valuable information about the photographer’s approach, conditions at the site of 

production, equipment used and challenges faced in making that image, developing a rich 

context to expand the knowledge that can be gleaned from a photograph.18 Collection of primary 

and first-person materials is the heart of this dissertation.  

The first segment of field fieldwork took place June 4–7 in middle Tennessee. June 5 was 

spent with Jack Corn at his home in Goodlettsville—a 20-minute drive up north Interstate-65 

from downtown Nashville. The house resembles a cabin and is set way back off the road up a hill 

nestled into a woods blanketed with Blue-Eyed Mary wildflowers (Figure 1). Corn has lived in 

the two-story home with his wife Helen Corn since purchasing the house from fellow journalist 

Nat Caldwell in the 1970s—their daughter Rosemarie Scott lives just down the hill at the end of 

the driveway. The morning was spent talking in the living room in front of a large picture 

window that overlooks the woods and a trail leading further back into the property, which Corn 

has set up as a nature conservancy. The setting is peaceful and revealing of his deep devotion to 

nature—a reverence that is echoed in his photographic work. Sitting in a rocking chair, he  

17  Bossen and Freedman, 2012 
18  Bossen and Freedman, 2012 

 

 

9 

Figure 1. Blue-Eyed Marys at Corn home in Goodlettsville, TN, Jack Corn, date unknown. 

 

 

10 

discussed his childhood on the outskirts of Nashville during the Great Depression and how that 

experience influenced him personally and informed his work in Appalachia. He also discussed 

the people he had worked with and photographed in the Clear Fork Valley and the long-term 

relationships he developed through his picture-making project. Over lunch, conversation turned 

to his love for teaching and the time he spent as the Photojournalist in Residence at Western 

Kentucky University. Helen made deli sandwiches and a creamy overnight fruit salad; 

Rosemarie made brownies for dessert. Corn talked about study abroad trips to Europe he would 

take his photojournalism students on in the 1990s, stating how important it was to experience and 

learn about culture and different perspectives. He believed that being able to relate and connect 

with people was the key to being a good photographer.  

Still sitting at the dining room table after lunch, Corn thumbed through a large black 

three-ring binder of photographs and captions he made in Appalachia. He would pause and 

describe the assignments and situations that had led to the making of many of the photographs, 

and answered questions related to specific photographs. After going through the binder, the 

setting of conversation moved to the lower level of the house to a den. The room was cozy and 

well-appointed with a couch, a desk and photographs from photographers he admired such as 

Russell Lee and Walker Evans hanging in simple black frames on the natural wood-clad walls. 

There, the interview lasted until mid-afternoon. While the conversation was winding down, 

Helen prepared brownies to go and gathered other materials such as newsletters from Clairfield 

and copies of Christmas letters exchanged with Sister Marie Cirillo, an advocate Corn had 

worked with for decades in the valley.  

 

The next day, June 6, was spent at Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the special 

collections reading room at Jean and Alexander Heard Library. The library houses the Jack Corn 

 

11 

collection consisting of five boxes of envelopes with notations containing negatives, and 

hundreds of corresponding photographic contact sheets. Examining the collection revealed an 

unpublished 78-page manuscript titled “Valleys of Despair.” Corn wrote the manuscript in 2000 

as a chronicle of his work in the Appalachian coal fields. As a source of firsthand background 

and contextual information for the photographs being examined in this dissertation, the 

manuscript was a remarkable find. Throughout the document were instructions to insert pictures 

to accompany specific passages. Examination of the contact sheets saw certain images selected 

by Corn using a colored grease pencil. Many of the selected images also had the word “book” 

written with a pen indicating they were to be used in the manuscript (Figure 2). The images 

selected on the contact sheet were determined by the researcher to be the photographs contained 

in the black binder examined at Corn’s house the previous day. Numbers at the beginning of the 

captions in the binder corresponded with the insertion notations found in the manuscript  

(Figure 3). The triangulation and intertextuality of these materials provide a breadth of 

information that allows for the creation of knowledge of the scene at the time and site of the 

photograph’s production. The photographs themselves, the detailed description recorded in the 

manuscript, and Corn’s recollection provided through oral history, all corroborate one another 

and strengthen the analyses that can be made by providing multiple primary sources of context.    

 

Further collection of primary source materials took place during the second segment of 

field fieldwork from October 6–9 in the greater Washington D.C. region. October 7 was spent 

doing archival work at the still picture division of the National Archives & Records 

Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland. Materials accessed at NARA include 

contact sheets and a bound caption log related to the 1979 report of the Presidents Commission 

on Coal, as well a box of materials related to Corn’s work on the Environmental Protection  

 

12 

ARCHIVES

Figure 2. Jack Corn manuscript page and contact sheet in the special collections reading room at Jean and Alexander Heard 

Library at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

Contoso Ltd.

 

ARCHIVES

Figure 3. Jack Corn manuscript page at Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. and binder 

page at Corn home in Goodlettsville, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

Contoso Ltd.

 

 

13 

 

 

 

Agency’s Documerica project. October 8 and part of the October 9 were spent in Washington, 

D.C. at the manuscript division of the Library of Congress. The LOC houses 36 boxes containing 

the Milton Rogovin Collection. Of the 36 boxes, 18 were examined that related to Rogovin’s 

work in Appalachia. These materials included a draft of an autobiography with chapters that 

included images and talked about his work with coal miners. Also in the collection were 

sketchbooks, printed trade magazines, pamphlets, and brochures, as well as correspondence 

between Rogovin and notable figures such as Robert Coles, Pete Seeger, Charles Kuralt, Dr. 

Donald Rasmussen and Harry Caudill.  

The final segment of field fieldwork took place November 17–20 back in Tennessee. 

An interview with Marie Cirillo on November 17 lasted about an hour and a half over McCafé 

coffee at the McDonald’s in Jellico, Tennessee just off Interstate-75. Jellico is a small one traffic 

light town nestled in the foothills of Jellico Mountain situated right at Tennessee’s border with 

Kentucky. State highway 25 snakes through the hills and runs through the center of town acting 

as a small main commercial strip with a bank, grocery store, Dollar General, Walgreens and 

McDonalds. At the east end of town, highway 25 intersects I-75 and winds its way up and 

through Jellico Mountain to meet up with state road 90 that runs the length of the Clear Fork 

Valley. When I-75 was being constructed through Tennessee in the 1960s it was heralded as a 

way to connect rural areas with urban centers. However, accessing the highway from the remote 

valleys has continued to be challenging at times.19 Cirillo said that taking highway 25 to Jellico 

and I-75 is approximately a 40-minute drive from her home in Eagan.20 This illustrates just how 

isolated the valley is and how difficult living there can be at times. Jellico, and La Follette—an 

even further drive to the south—are the closest towns outside of the valley. Cirillo said that Clear 

19 York, 2018 
20 Cirillo, 2019 

 

 

14 

Fork residents rely upon these two towns to get groceries and supplies, do banking, receive 

medical care, and for other convinces not available in the valley.21  

A second interview occurred the next morning at Cirillo’s house at the end of a one-lane, 

winding gravel road on top of a mountain in Eagan and continued all day throughout the Clear 

Fork Valley. Cirillo’s house is small, but manageable for the 93-year-old. In the living room 

hang pictures of her family including one of her, her siblings and her parents made while visiting 

her grandmother in Harlan, Kentucky (Figure 4). A small handwritten label near the photograph 

describes how living in Brooklyn, New York, the family would pass through the Cumberland 

Gap to reach family in Kentucky. On the floor in front of the wall of pictures sits a small 

collection of carved native American figurines. Cirillo said she admires the Cherokee, 

Chickasaw and Natchez that once called the valley home because of their deep respect and 

reverence for the land. Cirillo suggested that there are parallels between the exploitation and 

trauma forced upon indigenous peoples by the U.S. government and the exploitation and trauma 

caused by coal companies in the valley. There is small guest room, austere in its decor, that 

Cirillo said she uses for reading because of the abundance of afternoon sunlight. There is wood 

rocking chair in the corner next to a small bookshelf. A table and lamp sit beside a neatly made 

single bed that has a wooden cross hanging above it. Cirillo was joined for breakfast by Marie 

Webster, a life-long Clear Fork resident who took over as director of the Clear Fork Community 

Institute when Cirillo retired. Over the sound of breakfast cooking in a pan on the stovetop, the 

two Marie’s sat at a small table in the kitchen talking about where Cirillo should take the 

researcher, and who he should try to meet. The smell of bacon filled the room. The two were  

21 Cirillo, 2019 

 

 

15 

Figure 4. Family photo on living room wall, Marie Cirillo home, Eagan, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

16 

acting as gatekeepers in facilitating the ethnographic visit, just as Cirillo and Adams had for 

Corn decades earlier. On the way to the valley floor Cirillo seemed concerned by a work crew 

clearing some trees down a narrow two track road. She said most of the land surrounding the 

house was owned by a land trust she works with, and she would have to check to make sure they 

attained permission to fell the trees. She said, “now that the coal is gone, our trees are next.” 

After leaving the Clear Fork Valley late in the day on the 18th, the researcher drove 203 

miles southeast to Nashville (Figure 5). The next morning was spent with Corn at his home 

getting his perspective on materials collected from NARA and the previous day’s visit with 

Marie Cirillo in the Clear Fork Valley. Corn lamented how nice it would be to return to 

Clairfield and see old friends again. Since it was quite a drive, he recalled sleeping many nights 

on couches at people’s homes in the Valley, including at a small apartment connected to the Post 

Office in Clairfield shared by Cirillo and another nun. The conversation evolved into a 

discussion about how much had changed between the 1970s to the present. Touring the valley, 

the day before, Cirillo directed the researcher down what once was main street when Clairfield 

was a bustling coal town (Figure 6). They stopped and walked around a barren plot of land 

(Figure 7). Cirillo explained the site is where the Post Office, her small apartment and Louise 

Adam’s house used to be. She added that the only structures that remain from the era when Corn 

would frequent the valley were an abandoned gas station (Figure 8) and the union hall (Figure 9) 

seen in one of Corn’s photographs (Figure 10). The conversation with Corn lasted through lunch 

which consisted of chili, bean soup and corn bread.  

The remainder of the day, and the following day were spent back at Vanderbilt 

University in the special collections reading room at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library.  

 

 

17 

Figure 5. “Ethnographic Tools,” researchers field notes, pen, audio recorder and camera and coal specimens on table in 

Nashville apartment. During tour of the Clear Fork Valley with Marie Cirillo earlier in the day, these two pieces of coal fell from 

a truck taking over burden to a holding pond. Cirillo suggested we stop and pick them up. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

18 

Figure 6. Abandoned Main Street, Clairfield, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

19 

 
Figure 7. Overgrown lot, former site of the U.S. Post Office and postmaster’s house, Clairfield, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

20 

Figure 8. “Old service station,” Eagan, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

Figure 9. “Former Union Hall,” Clairfield, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

21 

 

 

Figure 10. “Union Hall,” Two men stand outside the Union Hall in Clairfield, TN. Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

 

 

 

22 

The researcher was given special access to the John Siegenthaler Papers which were still being 

organized and catalogued at the time of the visit. Initial interest in the massive collection that 

occupies more than 260 boxes pertained to materials that could provide knowledge of the kind of 

editor Siegenthaler was, and speak to the culture he cultivated in the newsroom at The 

Tennessean. This led to the discovery of a folder labeled “Tennessean Stories—Clairfield, 

Tennessee (Marie Cirillo’s Work)—1968–1969.”22 The folder contained documents and letters 

between Cirillo and Siegenthaler related to her mission work in the valley. This material was 

vital in discovering a direct connection between Siegenthaler, Corn and Clear Fork Valley.  

Through these three field work excursions hours of oral history and 6,319 pages of 

documents, contact sheets, photographs and other primary source materials were collected. These 

primary source materials combined with context from secondary sources informed the arguments 

developed in this dissertation and were used in the construction of context around the 

photographs central to these arguments. Examination of the types of materials collected also 

informed the development of the framework used for analysis outlined in the remainder of this 

chapter. While the bodies of work of these two photographers will be discussed holistically in 

comparison and contrast to one another and the work of other photographers, individual 

photographs have been selected for focused discussion and analysis. Photographs discussed 

individually were selected based on their historical significance; ability to show aesthetic 

difference; their position in relationship to the intersecting concepts of identity, power and place; 

or their ability to illustrate a point of view from either the photographer or the subject. 

22 John Siegenthaler Papers 

 

 

23 

CRITICIZING PHOTOGRAPHS: UNDERSTANDING MEANING THROUGH AESTHETICS 

Like any other type of message, a photograph has structure. Structure is perhaps where 

photographs and other types of messages, such as oral language or written texts, are most closely 

related.23 Sounds and symbols are arranged in a particular way to make words, which are 

assigned linguistic meaning; words are arranged into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs 

which are capable of expressing more complex ideas that contain a myriad of meanings that are 

dependent on how the text is interpreted.24 Likewise, photographs can be read and interpreted. In 

photography, structure is determined by form and composition, and interpretation begins with 

how a photograph is read. Form, or formal objects, are structural devices a photographer uses to 

encode complex messages into an image.25 There are many different types of formal objects and 

each accomplish the creation of different aspects of structure. Perspective, which is the angle of 

view from which a photograph is shot, can create a sense of scale in the scene and emphasize or 

diminish the appearance of elements dependent upon where they are placed in the composition. 

Leading lines create movement in a photograph and draw a viewer’s eye to what the 

photographer has selected as the most important parts of the image. Importance can also be 

accomplished through framing. A photographer, for example, can emphasize the importance of 

one object in a photograph by placing that object between or within other objects, creating the 

appearance of a frame. The use of framing as a formal object is clearly illustrated in one 

photograph from Rogovin’s Family of Miners series. Made in Scotland in 1982, the photograph 

(Figure 11), shows a group of people—six men and a woman with a baby carriage—standing in  

 

23 Barrett, 2001 
24 Richardson, 2006 
25 Barrett, 2001: 26–27 

 

24 

Figure 11. Family of Miners, Scotland. Milton Rogovin, 1982. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25 

line outside a medical office. The men are placed within a formal frame created by the pavement 

on the bottom, the door opening on the right, the large sign overhead and the sliver of brick wall 

at the edge of the windows on the left. The carriage places some physical distance between the 

woman and the men, and her placement outside the frame reinforces the separation. The frame in 

this regard is the formal object, not the boundary of a photograph—the photographic frame. 

Composition can be thought of as the syntax of formal objects, the way they are arranged within 

the photographic frame, to imbue meaning.26 Form and composition are what allow a viewer to  

read a photograph. By reading what is seen, photographs can be considered as aesthetic objects. 

Examining photographs as aesthetic objects allows one to consider the image’s quality as a work 

of art.27 Art critic Terry Barrett argues that description and criticism of photographs is an 

essential first step in interpreting their possible meaning. He writes that “description is a way of 

noticing in words and a way of getting others to notice.”28  

If one were examining a photograph, and assigning it meaning as purely an aesthetic 

statement made by a photographer and their use of photographic language, one could certainly 

arrive at a meaning for a photograph. However, in isolation from any other methods used for 

interpreting visual materials, that meaning is likely to be a narrow and incomplete one. Meaning 

from this approach is narrow and incomplete because photographic meaning comes from more 

than one site.29 Take the image of Reagan and his son (Figure 12) as an example. There is 

denotative meaning that can be arrived at just by reading the photograph and describing what is 

visible.30 There is meaning in the way the subjects are positioned in the frame, their expression,  

 

26 Barrett, 2001: 26–27 
27 Novitz, 2013: 176 
28 Barrett, 2001: 242 
29 Rose, 2016: 25 
30 Barrett, 2001 

 

26 

Figure 12. Procter Reagan and his son Terry stand outside their home in the Dogwalk community in Fentress County, Tenn. He 

is staring at two reporters who have just walked up the hill with his son Charles, who had been held in a Nashville jail for 

months without any charges being filed. Jack Corn, 1957. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

27 

what they are wearing. Just by looking at what is present one can make some sense of the scene. 

The house and the car are at a good distance behind the subjects, with rough textured soil in 

between. This suggests, not only a rural setting with ample open space, but a farm, with the 

stalks and stem of harvested crops littering the ground and a barn right behind the subjects. The 

trees are barren, suggesting the photograph was made in late fall or even winter. The subjects are 

close together suggesting a familial relation, most likely father and son, given the appearance of 

their ages. Looking outside the photograph for materials that can provide context to the 

photograph enables the viewer to construct a deeper, connotative meaning.31 Examining 

information provided by Corn through titling, captions, and his written and oral account of 

making this image, confirms the man and boy are father and son. The caption Corn provides in 

the binder of photographs at his home reads: “Proctor Reagan and his son Terry, at their home in 

the Dogwalk Community, in Fentress County Tennessee. He stares at the two strangers who had 

just walked up the hill with his missing son, Charles.” This confirmation helps the viewer better 

understand the subjects’ posture—and reveals that the boy is crouching and leaning into his 

father, relying upon him for safety in the presence of this unfamiliar person taking their picture. 

This is a fair amount of information, enough to allow viewers some sense of rurality and family 

bond. However, additional meaning of this scene can be found outside of the site of the image 

itself, in the site of production and site of circulation.32,33 Corn wrote about this encounter in the 

unpublished manuscript and details the context in which it was created. Corn recalls that Procter 

had not heard from his oldest son Charles for six months—not knowing he had been held in a 

Nashville Jail without charge. After David Halberstam a reporter at The Tennessean began  

 

31 Barrett, 2001 
32 Rose, 2016 
33 Hall, 1997  

 

28 

Figure 13. Jack Corn contact sheet showing approach to Reagan house in rural Fentress County, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

Figure 14. Jack Corn contact sheet showing celebration after initial interaction. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

 

showing interest in the boy’s case, he was released. Halberstam and Corn drove him north to 

Fentress County to surprise the family and report on the homecoming. The manuscript describes, 

and a contact sheet (Figure 13) shows, how the road was muddy and impassible by car, so they 

parked about two miles up the road and walked to the house in rural Cookeville. He made this 

guarded photograph of Proctor and Terry as they approached. Corn said once Proctor saw his son 

Charles he asked “Where have you been son” and Corn writes: “in the first few seconds, he 

stared at his missing son and the two outsiders, I snapped one frame, which became the first 

picture in this book.”34 After the explanation that Halberstam had helped get him released, Corn 

said the tense scene faded and the contact sheet (Figure 14) shows the following frames to be 

more joyous and celebratory as Proctor and Charles are seen smiling as they catch up and of 

Terry hugging his older brother. Knowing that Corn was there to photograph a surprise reunion 

34 Corn, 2000 

 

 

29 

between a father and his son contributes to the knowledge created by the photograph. Being a 

stranger Corn was met with suspicion as he approaches the home. Corn’s photograph allows the 

viewer to see the tension in the scene through the way Reagan positioned himself slightly in  

front of his younger son. The protective stance puts some distance between the boy and Corn. 

This dissertation approaches reconciling the connotative and denotative meanings of the 

aesthetic object and the sites of its production and circulation, through use of discourse analysis 

and photographic criticism. 

DISCOURSE AND IMAGES: DERIVING MEANING FROM WHAT IS SEEN AND NOT 
SEEN IN PHOTOGTAPHS 

A widely used approach to understanding discourse is by orienting it within linguistics 

and other traditions that are interested in textual or syntactical events. From this perspective 

discourse is understood as being language in use35,36 and concerned with how statements or 

sentences are connected to construct meaning.37 Examined within the context of photographs, 

instead of statements or sentences, discourse is concerned with the way formal objects are 

arranged in a composition to construct meaning.38 Within discourse there exist two parallel, and 

at times competing, perspectives: idealism and materialism. These perspectives explain the 

discursivity of photographic meaning and underscore why both the connotative and denotative 

approach to analysis is important in examining photographs.  

Materialism, as linguist John Richardson writes, is the assertion that “a world exists 

independent of human beings, and it is this material existence (and specifically our social 

 

35 Richardson, 2006: 23 
36 Wetherell, 2010: 3 
37 Wetherell, 2010: 16 
38 Rose, 2016: 205 

 

30 

relations) that determines our consciousness.”39 The denotative process of describing 

photographs addresses the presence of objects in a photograph, and does so in part from a 

materialistic perspective. For example, one description of Corn’s photograph of Reagan might 

include that there is a cluster of trees, there is a field, a house, a car, a barn and that the sky was 

clear and bright. These objects would exist in the same reality whether Reagan and his son were 

pictured or not, and even if Corn had not made that particular photograph which allowed the 

viewer to see those objects. This illustrates independence of these objects from the discursive 

reality Corn has constructed through his aesthetic choices. Denotative description then helps 

separate and rationalize what in a photograph is independent and what is constructed. French 

philosopher Michael Foucault asserts that this type of aesthetic criticism is necessary in order to 

remove the observer—their biases—from that which is seen.40 Psychologist Robert Wicks writes 

that “this way of regarding the world does not allow the observer to include itself simultaneously 

as another object to be observed neutrally.”41 What is constructed in a photograph is also 

addressed by denotative description, but to a much greater extent by connotative analysis. The 

constructed meaning of photographs can be understood through the perspective of idealism. 

Idealism—like the assertion of sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann that 

society and individuals construct their own realities—is the notion that social consciousness 

determines social being.42,43 Political theorist and Marxism scholar David McLellan writes: 

“human beings collectively and individually create their own reality in response to changing 

circumstance.”44 It is through the prism of idealism that the barn, the house and car can have 

 

39 Richardson, 2006: 28 
40 Foucault, 1973: 16 
41 Wicks, 2013: 161 
42 Berger and Luckman, 1966 
43 Richardson, 2006: 27 
44 McLellan, 1986: 7 

 

31 

meaning as objects and make sense in this scene. Likewise, the development of social norms and 

our understanding of family and kinship constructed though idealism allows for the interpretation 

of the body language of the two subjects, and the conclusion they are father and son.45 

Sociologist Fran Tonkiss suggests that the way in which materialism, ideology, denotative and 

connotative description work together make these perspectives a useful framework for 

understanding the production and meaning of discourse in photography.46 Philosopher Gillian 

Rose discusses implementing Tonkiss’ framework of photographic discourse analysis in her 

book Visual Methodologies. Rose writes: “First, there is the analysis of the structure of 

discursive statements. Second, there is a concern for the social context of those statements: who 

is saying them, in what circumstances.”47 The structure of discursive photographic statements 

consists of the formal objects discussed in the previous section of this chapter, and the social 

context comes from examining the sites of production and circulation of the photograph.  

The view of discourse presented by Foucault advances the importance of social contexts 

in discourse. For Foucault discourse stemmed from the social contexts that regulated meaning-

making at given periods of time.48 He argues that objects and events by themselves cannot 

produce knowledge; it takes the contexts of place, time and power to produce discourse, which 

then produces knowledge.49 Social psychologist Margaret Wetherell posits that constructionist 

theories of meaning are the foundation of Foucault’s conception of discourse writing: “discourse 

is not about whether things exist but about where meaning comes from. […] By ‘discourse’, 

Foucault meant ‘a group of statements which provide a language for talking about—a way of 

 

45 Berger and Luckman, 1966 
46 Tonkiss, 1998 
47 Rose, 2016: 205 
48 Wetherell, 2010: 72 
49 Foucault, 1972 

 

32 

representing knowledge about—a particular topic at a particular historical moment.”50 With the 

historical nature of the photographs being examined in this dissertation, working in Foucault’s 

historization of discourse to the framework of analysis becomes essential. Foucault’s approach 

acknowledges the contribution of place and time in creating the social and physical conditions in 

which the photographs were produced.  

Social conditions can be discussed by addressing the intertextuality of discourse and 

discursive events at the sites of photographic production and circulation. Rose describes 

intertextuality as “the way that the meanings of any one discursive image or text depend not only 

on that one text or image, but also on the meanings carried by other images and texts.”51 Both 

Corn and Rogovin wrote texts and collected vast amounts of materials related to their 

Appalachian picture-making projects. Those texts, when considered alongside the photographs 

they made, reside within the context of history Foucault was interested in. For the reader of a 

newspaper, or the patron of a gallery for example, the text that often accompanies a photograph, 

i.e. a museum label or caption, helps the viewer create meaning through the provided context of 

a photograph. The context is provided by the writer of the text. In the case of a caption that 

accompanies a photograph in a newspaper or magazine, that text is often written by the 

photographer with information he or she collected in field notes. Documentary photographers 

also often write or attach information to the back of prints providing some context. Typically, 

museum labels that the gallery viewer encounters are written by a curator using a photographer’s 

or archivist’s notes, not the photographer themselves. The context the viewer is provided is 

considered against and reconciled with their personal experience, prior knowledge, and system of 

50 Wetherell, 2010: 72–73 
51 Rose, 2016: 188 

 

 

33 

beliefs combined with what is seen in a photograph to imbue that photograph with meaning.52 

For researchers, context is found in similar places as the casual viewer and is reinforced by 

analysis of archival material.53,54  

By adopting a framework of analysis that considers materialism, ideology, denotative and 

connotative description within the context of a specific historical period (1956–1979), discourse 

in this dissertation means: knowledge is constructed by identifying the particulars of a 

photograph, including what can be known through reading and describing the photograph in 

combination with what can be known from investigating what is outside the photograph. What is 

meant by outside of the photograph are the circumstances surrounding its creation, the 

positioning of those who created the photograph, and how the photograph was used within the 

context of social conditions present at the time. Analysis and discussion of discourse from this 

perspective permits questions to be asked of photographs that are deeply rooted in the time and 

place of their creation. Questions such as what the meaning of mining is delve deeper than just 

understanding what mining looked like.  

The focus of inquiry can further be refined by studying specific collections of 

photographs or the bodies of work of specific photographers. In the context of this dissertation, 

specificity of discourse can be focused on the knowledge of coal mining produced by a particular 

set of photographs, made of a particular group of miners, in a particular place, at a particular 

time, by two particular photographers. In the next chapter, photography will be explored through 

a much deeper discussion of historical discourse and narratives of mining aesthetics that for 

 

52 Berger and Luckman, 1966 
53 Startt and Sloan, 2013 
54 Barret, 2001 

 

34 

decades contributed to the heroic vision of empire building while picturing miners as poor, dirty 

and downtrodden—discourses disrupted by Corn’s and Rogovin’s photographs.  

MEANING AND POWER: TWO PERSPECTIVES OF APPROACH  

Knowledge and meaning are produced by power.55 Where the power of photography, and 

how it is used, however, depends in part upon what perspective one chooses to take. Based in 

Marxist theory, traditional reductionist approaches of power operate through breaking society 

down into a class system of the bourgeoisie—“those who buy labour,” the proletariat—“those 

who sell their own labour,” and the petit bourgeoisie — “small-scale craftsmen/women and 

entrepreneurs who either create a product themselves or purchase a commodity and re-sell it for 

a profit.”56 Situated within the capitalistic structure, in this system society operates by the 

bourgeoisie gaining all their power and wealth directly from the work of the proletariat and petit 

bourgeoisie. From this perspective, power in photography is meant to preserve this hegemonic 

structure so whereas photography “has power, that power is not equal among all members of 

society.”57 Being a self-described socialist, instead of using photography to preserve the 

hegemonic structure of capitalism, Rogovin sympathized with his proletariat subjects and used 

his power as a social documentarian to fight against their anonymization by the bourgeoisie. 

Rogovin used the evidentiary nature of the documents he produced to show that the workers 

were not only vital to the coal industry, but as individual members of society. Power shown in 

Corn’s photographs, however, manifests differently. While he certainly did show the effects coal 

 

55 Richardson, 2006: 12 
56 Richardson, 2006: 2 
57 Richardson, 2006: 12–13 

 

35 

company control had over the miners and the community, his photographs also show attempts of 

Appalachians to regain some of that control.  

This suggests, as Foucault argued, that power can come from many places. Beginning in 

the 1970s, Foucault began advancing a new concept of power that conceived that rather than 

being rigidly structural in a top-down hierarchy, power is more fluid and circulates among 

multiple spheres and “permeates all levels of social existence.”58 This departure from a Marxist 

perspective of structuralism raised questions about who the power derived from language could 

benefit, and if that power could be episodic in nature depending upon the circumstance and 

context of the discourse. Foucault argued that “ where there is power there is resistance … a 

multiplicity of points of resistance.”59 While this dissertation does not fully adopt a Foucauldian 

framework of power, Foucault’s perspective certainly informs the way power can be seen using 

photography. Resistance to power manifests in Corn’s photographs through the individuals who 

were working to improve the social conditions found in Appalachia despite the coal companies’ 

dominance over all aspects of miners’ lives. What Corn’s and Rogovin’s photographs do from a 

Foucauldian perspective is challenge the prevailing power of the coal industry through the notion 

that “there are many discourses that jostle and compete in their effects.”60 Chapters three and six 

delve into power in discourse in much greater detail. Chapter three examines the colonial logics 

employed by coal companies in constructing exploitive structures of power in Appalachia, while 

chapter six examines the power local gatekeepers exercised in shaping visual discourse through 

providing Corn and Rogovin access to their communities.    

 

58 Wetherell, Taylor and Yates, 2010: 77 
59 Foucault, 1979: 95 
60 Rose, 2016: 189 

 

36 

PLACE AS A SITE OF DISCURSIVE MEANING-MAKING  

Exploring the concept of place is one-way meaning can be extracted from the discourse 

of a photograph. Understanding the site of the discourse, meaning where the discourse is about 

or is produced, can be helpful in understanding what the discourse is trying to do. From a 

humanistic perspective, the concept of place generally relates to the relationship between people 

and the physical space around them. While exact conceptualizations vary across specific social 

disciplines, there is a general consensus that place involves some sort of perceived or felt bond 

between individuals and a location. From an anthropological perspective, the concept of 

attachment is used to understand this relationship. Anthropologist Setha Low suggests that the 

bond between human and place is a cultural and symbolic way for a people to understand their 

environment, thus “is more than an emotional and cognitive experience, and includes cultural 

beliefs and practices that link people to place.”61 Similarly, sociologist David Hummon argues 

that “sense of place involves a personal orientation toward place, in which one’s understanding 

of place and one’s feelings about place become fused in the context of environmental 

meaning.”62 Place in the context of this dissertation is considered from a similar perspective. 

Examining the areas in which Corn and Rogovin made photographs and their understanding of 

the issues the miners, the families and communities faced is critical to gleaning knowledge from 

their photographs.  

Appalachia is a unique geographic region, with unique cultural experiences shared across 

those who inhabit the land; the land itself being an important symbol in the creation of shared 

cultural identities. As a place, what has come to be known as Appalachia is vast. Current 

61 Low, 1992: 165–186 
62 Hummon, 1992: 253–278 

 

 

37 

consensus is that it occupies 420 counties in parts of 13 U.S. states (Figure 15): from southern 

New York state down through Pennsylvania and West Virginia, southeastern Ohio, eastern parts 

of Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as western Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South  

Carolina and northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.63,à Despite its geographic vastness, 

geologically, one commonality that links the region’s many subregions is large ribbons of rich 

coal deposited beneath the surface of the Allegheny, Adirondacks, Blue Ridge, Great Smoky and 

Cumberland mountain ranges. Like long black strands of coveted thread, coal binds these 

separate mountainous stretches together, weaving a common area of culture around its 

extraction. The region’s geography, people and history are fundamental to knowledge of 

Appalachia as a remote and isolated place and as the site of production for Corn’s and Rogovin’s 

photographs.  

The site of production is helpful in the discourse of an image because it allows for the 

production of knowledge around the social and physical conditions surrounding how, when and 

where a photograph was made.64 Knowing that an image was made in Appalachia, northern 

Tennessee specifically, adds to the meaning of the photograph and what can be known about the 

scene. Combining what can be known about the scene through reading the photograph with one’s 

prior understanding of Appalachia as a region from external sources of discourse helps develop a 

deeper discursive meaning of a photograph. Also contributing to the discursive production of 

knowledge of a photograph is understanding its site of circulation. The site of circulation gives 

clues to a photograph’s intended meaning because it questions the institutions that may have  

 

63 Appalachian Regional Commission, 2020 
à The Appalachian Regional Commission is a governmental body aimed at the economic development of the 
Appalachian region. Members of the commission include the governors of Alabama, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, 
Kentucky, South Carolina, Maryland, Tennessee, Mississippi, Virginia, New York, West Virginia, North Carolina, 
and a federally appointed chair.  
64 Rose, 2016: 27 

 

38 

Figure 15. 2008 Boundary Map of the Appalachian Region from the Appalachian Regional Commission. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

39 

sanctioned the work and how the photograph was meant to be viewed. Knowing that Corn made 

many photographs, like the one of Proctor Reagan and his son, as a staff photographer for The 

Tennessean in Nashville while on an assignment, imbues this photograph with meaning. That 

Corn was a photojournalist give the photograph meaning that is different from if it had been a 

family snapshot made by the man’s wife or a family friend. The Tennessean was a news 

organization with more than 200,000 readers. Knowing that it was made for the intended 

distribution to those readers as a symbolic story documenting the mountain people’s lifestyle 

contributes to the meaning of the photograph. Chapter three focuses exclusively on the cultural 

and geographic conditions that have contributed to the construction of Appalachia as a region. 

These conditions are vital to understanding the sites of production and circulation of Corn’s and 

Rogovin’s photographs. 

 
THE ROLE OF IDENTITY IN DISCURSIVE PRODUCTION OF REPRESENTATION  

Thinking about photography in terms of the apparatus of news gathering is one way to 

approach exploration of identity in the production of discourse. “News is not really as it 

happened, but an observed documentation of that reality—a representation,” of places, events 

and people in society.65,66 This argument by journalism scholar Elfriede Fürsich is central to the 

current examination of the production of photographic discourse and representation, because like 

news, photographs are also a form of observed documentation. But her use of language—

including both ‘documentation’ and ‘representation’—suggest, perhaps documentation and 

representation reference the same concept. This raises the question that if documenting and 

representing something are the same type of discursive action, what does the use of the modifier  

65 Buozis and Creech, 2018 
66 Fürsich, 2009 

 

 

40 

‘observed’ do to understanding the notion of documentation? Cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s 

exhaustive work in representation holds some insight. He argues that there are fundamentally 

two types of representation: representation that “describes or depicts” a concept in reality or in 

the imaginary, and representation that “symbolizes” that concept.67 Representation within the 

framework adopted in this dissertation, descriptive representation is embodied by connotative 

knowledge, whereas denotative knowledge is concerned with a photograph’s symbolic 

representation. Scholars who work extensively in documentary studies such as Robert Coles and 

William Stott contend that documentation is an evidentiary action undertaken to offer an 

accurate depiction of something in reality.68,69 However, when examined through the mediating 

effect of observation, Fürsich’s use of both documentation and representation becomes a little 

more clear. Visual communication scholar Julianne Newton argues that observation is an act of 

power in which the observed, be it someone or something, “is placed under authority or control,” 

of the observer.70 A similar relationship between authority and observation is found in Discipline 

and Punishment were Foucault discusses legibility as the state’s ability to exert control through 

the implication of surveillance.71 Placing Fürsich’s argument in the context of the relationship 

between language and identity suggests that she is applying both meanings of representation to 

her argument. If what is observed is under the power of the observer, then how reality is 

documented in a photograph, what is represented is going to depend on who is producing the 

discourse, and how they see themselves positioned in that reality. The influence and effect of 

identity on Corn’s and Rogovin’s production of Appalachia photographs are discussed in greater 

 

67 Hall, 2013: 2–3 
68 Stott, 1986: 5–6 
69 Coles, 1997: 2 
70 Newton, 2013: 38 
71 Foucault, 1977 

 

41 

detail in chapters five and six. Chapter five explores personal and photographic influences that 

shaped Corn’s and Rogovin’s positioning as documentary photographers, and the aesthetics of 

the work. Chapter six will focus on the approach of these photographers in developing 

relationships with their subjects in isolated areas of Appalachia. 

 

42 

CHAPTER 2 

BUILDING THE EMPIRE AND ENVISIONING HEROICS:  
DISCOURSE AND AESTHETICS OF MINING (1868–1977) 

“Coal is the prime mover of our civilization, whether for peace or war, the substance that gives 
to us more useful things, more things vital to us, is more widely known, that enters more closely 
into the lives of civilized man than any other substance; about which we know so much and yet 

so little; formed when there was no sign or footstep of man, yet the real value and worth of 
which has only been discovered in the last few years; without which our boasted civilization 

would be as of the Stone Age!” 

 

 
The modern world owes, in large part, its existence to coal. As the quotation above 

—F. R. Wadleigh, 1921 

 
 

 

suggests, coal has been a fundamental force over the past two centuries, helping to develop how 

wars could be waged, goods shipped, homes heated, raw materials refined, energy produced, and 

people moved across vast distances. While early documented uses of coal date back to smelting 

copper during the Han dynasty in China (206 BCE–220 CE)—and is mentioned in the writings 

of Greek philosopher Aristotle as being used in the forges of metal smiths—coal did not emerge 

as the driving force of industrial modernity until its widespread use was adopted in the 

production of iron in the 1830s.72 Coal’s rise as an indispensable source of fuel coincides with 

important periods in both the emergence and development of photographic technology and the 

westward expansion of burgeoning U.S. nationhood.     

This chapter explores perspectives on the practice of photographing mines throughout 

U.S. history and in parallel, discusses the material connections and technological advancements 

that link these enterprises. Through an examination of photographs made by Timothy O’Sullivan 

(1871 to 1874), Lewis W. Hine (1908 to 1924) and Arthur Rothstein (1935 to 1940), among 

others, this chapter offers commentary aimed at illustrating historical visual representation of 

72 Wadleigh, 1921: 6 

 

 

43 

coal mining and what these representations discursively contributed to our understanding of the 

role of miners and the function of mining in society. This commentary is essential in advancing 

one of the key arguments made in this dissertation—that Corn’s and Rogovin’s work in the 

1950s, 60s and 70s disrupted coal mining discourse popular throughout the 19th and early 20th 

centuries. In order to illustrate the ways in which their work was disruptive, the discourse being 

disrupted must first be explored. The photographs discussed in this chapter reflect discourse that 

reinforces the importance placed on coal in the growth of the United States and its global 

economic prowess during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  

SEEING THE SCENE: SURVEY WORK AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLONIAL 
CONTEXTS 

In 1867, Yale-educated chemist Clarence King embarked upon a massive expedition west 

to “study all rock formations, mountain ranges, detrital plains, mines, coal deposits, soils, 

minerals, ores, saline and alkaline deposits”73 along the 40th parallel between the 105th and 120th 

meridians. The expedition was launched by the U.S. War Department under the direction of  

Major General A.A. Humphreys with the promise of “a study and description of all the natural 

resources of the mountain country near the Union and Central Pacific railroads; secondly, the 

completion of a continuous geological section across the widest expansion of the great 

Cordilleran Mountain System.”74 The 803-page first volume of King’s report titled “Systematic 

Geology” was published in 1878 and beautifully illustrated with 27 plates painted by artist Julian  

 

73 Trachtenberg, 1989: 119–130 
74 King, 1878 

 

 

44 

 

Figure 16. Frontispiece of The Fortieth Parallel survey report Vol.1, Systematic Geology. “Natural Column – Washakie Bad-

Lands, Wyoming,” Julian Bien, 1878. 

 

Bien, and a series of 12 analytical geological maps. The frontispiece of the report (Figure 16) 

depicts a natural column rock formation jutting to the sky from a rocky terrain in the Bad Lands 

of Wyoming. Two members of the Washakie band of the Shoshone tribe can be seen at the base 

of the column looking to their horses and the mountains in the distance. Bien was not a member 

of the survey team, however, and did not witness this scene for himself. His paintings were 

interpretive renderings of photographs made by expedition photographer Timothy O’Sullivan. At 

the time the first volume of the report was published, interpretive illustration was still 

commonplace in publishing. Despite the growing popularity of photography, photographic 

 

45 

images were not able to be reproduced by a printing press until the halftone process began being 

adopted in the 1880s, after King’s reports were published.75,76 Though not included in the 

survey’s reports that were widely distributed, O’Sullivan’s prints were collected and bound into 

volumes and shared with high ranking government officials and members of Congress interested 

in the survey’s results.77 

 

O’Sullivan’s photographs show rugged mountain landscapes, buttes jutting up from 

desert plains, waterfalls, forested hills, and rivers winding through gorges or far into the horizon. 

Each view he claimed was constructed to celebrate the physical characteristics and geologic 

structure of the landscape before him. As often as possible, O’Sullivan placed strips of land in 

the foreground of his compositions as if to invite the viewers to imagine they themselves 

standing there. “Mt. Agassiz, Uinta Mountains” illustrates O’Sullivan’s masterful use of 

foreground and background. Taken in 1869, the photograph (Figure 17) shows the summit of Mt. 

Agassiz gently sloping down to abruptly end at an area of sheer, jagged cliffs that carry the 

mountain down to a rocky, forested lakeshore. The reflections of the Rocky Mountain Juniper 

stretch across the glassy surface of the water to a thin sliver of shore O’Sullivan has placed to 

anchor the position of his view in the frame. Another photograph of a mining camp in 1867 

exemplifies this technique. The photograph, simply titled “Gold Hill, Nevada” (Figure 18) is 

taken from a hilltop vantagepoint looking down at timber structures spread out across a valley to 

the base of a mountain in the distant background. Just beyond the reach of the settlement and the 

mountain’s base, the viewer can just see an area of disturbed land, foliage removed, soil  

 

 

75 Twyman, 1970 
76 Stulik and Kaplan, 2013 
77 Trachtenberg, 1989: 122 

 

46 

Figure 17. “Mt. Agassiz, Uinta Mts [Utah],” T. H. O’Sullivan, 1869. 

 

 

47 

Figure 18. “Gold Hill, Nevada,” T. H. O’Sullivan, 1867. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

48 

lighter in color, where the entrance of a mine has been constructed. The photograph celebrates 

man’s conquest over the land. It shows the industrial prowess of the U.S. and that through 

mankind’s achievement industry can thrive in even the most remote locale. Again, O’Sullivan 

has grounded his position in the photograph, leaving a sliver of the sagebrush-covered hill in 

view. Alan Trachtenberg, professor emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale 

University, writes that O’Sullivan’s mining pictures “force us to recognize that even the 

Shoshone, even Carson Desert, cannot be understood simply as “nature” existing prior to and 

apart from the social activity of surveys, but as the product of a distinct mode of seeing, 

knowing, and possessing.”78  

While King and his crew were pressing westward across the North American continent, 

in Europe teams of English explorers and adventurers mounted similar survey expeditions 

aiming to discover the source of the Nile River in southern Africa. Expeditions such as those to 

Somaliland led by geographer and ethnologist Sir Richard Burton and to Lake Victoria led by 

explorer John Henning Speke had similar underlying goals to King’s survey of the 40th parallel: 

assess and document resources that could be of economic value to the empire.79,80 Like Burton 

and Speke, King chronicled the discoveries of the expedition in written and illustrated volumes. 

Less than a century had passed since gaining independence from the British Empire, yet the 

United States found itself modeling its empire building survey after the English colonial practice 

of Victorian exploration and travel writing. Mary Louise Pratt, a scholar of Portuguese and 

Spanish languages and literatures, takes aim at the English colonial practice of surveys in her 

1992 book “Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation.” Her chapter titled “From the 

 

78 Trachtenberg, 1989: 152 
79 Pratt, 1992: 201–202 
80 Trachtenberg, 1989: 122 

 

49 

Victoria Nyanza to the Sheraton San Salvador” contains a scathing decolonial critique of Burton 

and Speke’s expeditions. Using colonial-settler logics that work to establish imperial dominance 

over peoples and lands through conquest, Pratt argues that the appropriation of view is a 

mechanism for colonization through the idea of the “monarch of all I survey.” This logic, like 

Foucault’s legibility, prescribes that to behold something is to have power of it, to possess it. 

Speke operated under the colonial logic that being the first European to gaze upon Lake Victoria 

granted him the privilege of naming the body of water. Speke claimed his discovery for the 

expanding British Empire despite the area already being inhabited by indigenous peoples.81 King 

in his survey of the West also employed the practice of ‘monarch of all I survey’ by renaming 

many symbolic Native American sites, including Mount Whitney in California’s Yosemite 

Valley. Being able to visually document the discoveries made on expeditions has played a 

historically important role in reinforcing the power of gaze in the possession of newly discovered 

territory. Dispatching photographers such as O’Sullivan to accompany the expedition teams, 

King continued a long tradition of illustrating the landscape employed by European explorers. 

In colonial contexts of exploration, the tradition of the illustration, or photograph, brings 

to public attention all the ways raw, untamed regions of the world could benefit from 

industrialized society. As a benefactor and protectorate, explorers like King reinforce imperial 

logics that appropriate land through discovery by asserting their ownership of the view. 

Photography, like the Victorian brand of “verbal painting” Pratt criticizes in travel writings of 

the 19th century, operates within the assumption that what the photographer has photographed is 

all there is to see. If there was more of interest, of importance, of significance, certainly it would 

have been photographed as well. In many ways the act of taking a photograph itself is inherently 

 

81 Pratt, 1992: 202 

 

50 

a colonial act.82,83,84 Pratt alludes to the colonial nature of visual documentation in Imperial Eyes 

in a very abstract way and provides evidence supporting this claim. Early on in her seminal work 

On Photography, Susan Sontag lays the groundwork to connect Pratt’s decolonial arguments and 

the colonizing nature of the image. Sontag asserts that “to photograph is to appropriate the thing 

photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like 

knowledge—and, therefore, like power.”85 Examining these two very simple and elegant 

sentences against Pratt’s discussion of discovery and exploration photographers can be imagined 

as embodying the persona of the ‘monarch-of-all-I-survey.’  

Photographs of mining and miners contribute to the development of socio-environmental 

visual discourse in a number of key contexts. Through historical observation these contexts can 

be described as: (1) The objectification and exploitation of miners as a commodity; (2) the 

glorification of industry in expanding colonial progress (3) the relationship between mine sites as 

a source of economic production and the communities that form around them; (4) the 

relationship between miners and the land that is altered through the act of mining; and (5) the 

erasure in visual narratives of societal mass consumption as catalyst for degradation of the 

environment through mining activities. Social issues such as westward expansion and indigenous 

relocation, apartheid, decolonialism and the rise of the environmental movement all have 

contributed to conditions present at the sites of photographic production for mining photographs. 

Early work of photographers related to mining in the 19th —and first half of the 20th —centuries 

focused primarily on architectural or technical studies that illustrated a mine’s workings and on 

portraiture of miners, both of which made discursive contributions to the role of mines and 

 

82 Gabara, 2006 
83 Hight and Sampson, 2013 
84 Langford, 2008 
85 Sontag, 1977: xx 

 

51 

miners in society. The context of coal mining discourse popularized beginning with King’s 

survey and continuing through the Great Depression focus on the commodification of mine 

workers, and the benefit their labor affords industry. It is not until the 1930s that the view of 

mining begins to widen.  

MINING AND PHOTOGRAPHY: HISTORIES INTERTWINED  

 

 

Inextricably linked by the raw materials required to gather, focus and record light on a 

fixed plane, the process of photography and the act of mining have a long and interconnected 

history. Mined aluminum and magnesium have been used in the production of camera bodies; 

silica and quartz for optics; gold and copper for modern internal circuitry; and silver for light 

sensitive emulsion applied to cellulous and glass negatives and tintypes. While mining has 

provided the materials historically necessary to make a photograph, photography has provided 

historical evidence and visual narratives that illustrate the relationship between mining and a 

myriad of social issues. The use of photography as a medium for documentary work has a long 

and rich history, in which industry, has been a frequent subject.86,87,88 Photographs of mines and 

miners occupy episodic instances in the bodies of work of many notable photographers such as 

Hine, Walker Evans, W. Eugene Smith, Margaret Bourke-White, and Sebastião Salgado. Mining, 

coal in particular, offers itself to be photographed by yielding natural aesthetics of rich textures, 

deep gritty tones and both smooth and angular structures for photographers to experiment with 

composition. Visualized through representations of industrial prowess and vast, imposing 

landscapes of extractable natural resources, mining has inspired the imaginations of 

 

86 Bossen and Freedman, 2012 
87 Benjamin, 1972 
88 Gernheim and Gernheim, 1969 
 

 

52 

photographers dating back to the California gold rush and the Fortieth Parallel Survey work of 

O’Sullivan, Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson and A.J. Russell.89 The first images made 

using an experimental magnesium flash powder were made by O’Sullivan of the Savage Mine in 

Curtis Shaft, Nevada in 1868, making the mine itself an important site in the history of 

photography.90 The photograph (Figure 7) is symbolic of the reciprocity found in the material 

and technological connections between photography and mining. O’Sullivan’s silver albumen 

print was the first time the inner working of a mine could be seen outside of being physically in 

the mine itself. Aside from capturing what the mine looked like, the photograph as an object also 

illustrates the importance of mining to industry. It symbolizes the importance of mining in 

providing the materials necessary for technological advancement, such as the magnesium needed 

to illuminate the scene during exposure, and the silver needed to make  

the print. O’Sullivan used technological advancements in photography again in his photograph 

“Gold Hill, Nevada.” The photograph shows more than man’s determination to conquer the west, 

it also gives the viewer a glimpse at how photography of remote places became possible in the 

late 19th century, expanding the explorer’s technical capabilities for visual documentation of their 

discoveries.  

O’Sullivan’s mining photographs were made with the wet plate process of photography 

called the collodion process. By the 1850s it had mostly replaced the daguerreotype.91 Pieces of 

glass were coated with light sensitive silver nitrate just before exposure and needed to be 

processed quickly after the exposure was complete. In the foreground in the lower left of 

O’Sullivan’s “Gold Hill, Nevada” photograph, his portable blackout tent can be seen. The small  

 

89 Trachtenberg, 1989: 119–130 
90 Rogovin and Keller, 2005: 8–9 
91 Dotschkal, 2015 
 

 

53 

Figure 19. “Cars coming out of shaft, Savage Mine,” T.H. O’Sullivan, 1868. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

54 

light-tight tent allowed O’Sullivan to prepare and process glass negatives in the field, making 

possible this type of survey photography. Inclusion of the blackout tent in the photograph serves 

as a symbol of mankind’s supremacy over the elements. Not only can man conquer and tame the 

land, but he can also conquer and tame the light that falls upon that land, controlling and bending 

it to his will in recording his conquests.  

Moving beyond showing the technical aspects of mining, as O’Sullivan did, 

photographers such as Hine began focusing their attention on working conditions, just at the time 

the labor movement was taking hold across the country at the turn of the 20th century. Aided in 

part by advancements in technology, such as the introduction of cellulose roll film in 1889 and 

the 120mm format in 1901, photographers had more portability and freedom than enjoyed by 

photographers in the 19th century. 92 In 1908 Hine, a former teacher, began work with the 

National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Hine’s survey of child labor took him to mines in 

Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky to photograph child laborers known as breaker boys. 

His work aimed to expose the dangerous and exploitative nature of child labor practices within 

the U.S. capitalistic industrial complex. Hine’s portraits of mines help elevate him to the status of 

being the predominant documentary photographer of his era. This work became an important 

symbol of the child labor moment, with advocates for labor law reform using Hine’s photographs 

as evidence of the deplorable working conditions. Hine’s photographs, for example (Figure 20), 

of the stoic-looking, soot-covered laborer helped establish the dominate aesthetic of miners in 

20th century.  Hine gave intimate but narrow glimpses into the relationship between miners and 

their work while exposing the harsh working conditions of child mine laborers. While Hine’s  

92 Eastman Kodak Company, 2013 

 

 

55 

Figure 20. “Young Driver in Mine,” Brown, West Virginia. Lewis Hine, 1908. 

 

 

56 

mining photographs are important, they occupy relatively small spaces in his overall body of 

work for the NCLC, and as innovative as they may have been, they are still limited in view. His 

work focused on the miner and the dangers they faced, rather than the importance of coal to the 

nation’s domestic and industrial needs. Compared with his photographs of other types of labor 

and industry, Hine’s mining photographs showed little beyond the mining sites themselves, 

exposing the outside life of miners to a lesser extent than the work of Corn and Rogovin.  

THE IMPORTANCE OF COAL TO SOCIETY: FROM HEATING AND THE ELECTRIC 
LIGHT TO TRANSPORTATION AND INDUSTRY 

 
 

On May 10, 1876 U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant stood on a platform in the sprawling 

Machinery Hall at the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia, a crowd of 100,000 packed around 

him (Figure 21).93 Officially named the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufacturers and 

Products of the Soil and Mine, the event was planned as a celebration of the 100th anniversary of 

the signing of the Declaration of Independence and showcased both cultural and industrial 

achievements of the age.94 Grant stood at the controls of a massive machine on the platform and 

as a choir sang Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” he pulled a lever, putting the coal-fired steam 

engine into motion. Environmental and energy policy analyst Barbara Freese describes the event 

from historical accounts, writing: “With a hiss of steam, the engine’s cross beam began to rock, 

its two enormous pistons began to churn, and eight miles of connecting shafts running through 

the hall began to rotate. A cheer rose from the crowd as fourteen acres of gleaming machinery  

 

93 Freese 2003: 129 
94 Wainwright, Nicholas, Weigley, Russell, Wolf and Edwin, 1982: 460 

 

 

57 

Figure 21. President Grant and the Emperor of Brazil starting the great Corliss Engine in Machinery Hall.  

Harper’s Weekly, March 27, 1867. 

 

 

 

58 

simultaneously sprang to noisy life, spinning, awing, sewing, pumping, and printing, trumpeting 

in unison the nation’s arrival as an industrial power.”95  

The quote that begins this chapter is from a trade manual published in 1921 by the 

National Coal Mining News of Cincinnati, Ohio for those in the coal distribution and 

procurement industries. Written by F.R. Wadliegh of the American Institute of Mining &  

Metallurgical Engineers, “A Coal Manual for Salesmen, Buyers and Users” is a detailed account 

of all the industries and functions in society that depend upon coal. By 1895 coal became the  

primary source of fuel in the U.S., surpassing petroleum-derived products such as kerosene or 

fuel oil.96 A 1941 photograph by Howard Liberman, titled “Fuel Conversion” (Figure 22), shows 

the process of converting a fuel oil furnace to burn coal. This was common practice in the early- 

to mid-20th century, as coal became a more abundant source of fuel. Liberman’s “Fuel 

Conversion” and a pair of photographs made in the 1930s by Rothstein make aesthetic 

connections between the production of coal and consumption, a narrative absent in much of the 

visual discourse surrounding coal. “West Mine, West Frankfort, Illinois” (Figure 23) shows an 

abandoned coal tipple next to a row of electrical poles carrying high voltage wires far off into  

the distance. Tipples are processing facilities located at or near mines used to refine raw coal.  

They remove impurities through washing and breaking apart larger pieces into either coke, or 

various sizes such as screenings, nuts, lumps or eggs categorized and sorted based on use.97 

“Ruins of Franco Coal Company No. 1 mine, Steritz, Illinois” (Figure 24), shows the 

infrastructure of an electrical sub-station at a mining facility abandoned after a flood in 1938. 

Both photographs visually tie coal mining with the production of electricity which, besides being  

 

95 Freese 2003: 129 
96 U.S. Department of Energy Information Administration, 2013 
97 Wadleigh, 1921: 83 

 

59 

Figure 22. “Fuel conservation,” Howard Lieberman, 1942. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

60 

Figure 23. “West Mine, West Frankfort, Illinois,” Arthur Rothstein, 1939. 

 

 
 
 

 

61 

Figure 24. “Ruins of Franco Coal Company No. 1 mine, Steritz, Illinois,” Arthur Rothstein, 1939. 

 

 

 

62 

used to heat the home, was the most direct link between individuals and coal outside coal-

producing regions. These instances in Rothstein’s work move away from the abstraction of 

Hine’s worker aesthetic and the knowledge of danger his work produce. Rothstein’s work is 

post-development, showing coal production at the processing and distribution phase. Focusing 

on processing and distribution moves even further away from O’Sullivan’s idealization of the 

scenic terrain and its potential for development through man’s ability to harness and exert control 

both above and below the land.   

Coal was burned in furnaces to heat individual homes. It was used to make steel, and in 

boilers that powered locomotives and steam ships. Increasing uses for coal led production to 

double in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century. Coal production went from 111,302,322 tons in  

1890 to 212,316,112 in 1900, and more than doubled again in the first decade of the 20th 

century.98 Two photographs, “Coaling the Pacific Mail S.S. Siberia” (Figure 25) made in 1904, 

and “Coaling the Leviathan” made in 1918 (Figure 26), illustrate coal being used to move 

society. Both photographs show barges moored against steamships as laborers shovel coal into 

boiler rooms in preparation for voyage. Ships such as these required a massive amount of coal to 

operate. For example, a 182-foot steamship weighing 235 tons would burn five pounds of coal 

per hour to generate 1 horsepower of propulsion.99 At 8.7 knots, requiring 148 horsepower, a 

steamship of this size would need more than 128 tons of coal to travel the 3,470 miles from 

London to New York. Freese writes that “the industrial age emerged literally in a haze of coal 

smoke, and in that smoke, we can read much of the history of the modern world.”100 That smoke 

 

98 U.S. Department of the Interior, Report of the Coal Mines Administration, 1947: xiv 
99 Institute of Nautical Archaeology, Texas A&M University 
100 Freese, 2003: 2 

 

63 

and the gritty, sooty textures of coal helped photographers document its emergence as the 

dominant material fueling U.S. industrial might. Photographers like O’Sullivan and Hine  

helped establish prevailing views of coal and mining that dominated the visual aesthetics for 

decades. Viewed from a place of privilege, their images are a reminder of how colonial gaze and 

photography work through symbiosis to reinforce prevailing western logics of imperialism and 

superiority. In the grand tradition of the monarch-of-all-I-survey, O’Sullivan and other survey 

photographers of the era understood the explicit interaction between aesthetics and ideology. 

These photographers revealed to the world a promontory scene. Their photographs of westward 

expansion and empire building offered a balcony view of colonial conquests.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

64 

Figure 25. “Coaling the Pacific Mail S.S. “Siberia” at the fortified naval station of Nagasaki, Japan,”  

Underwood & Underwood, 1904. 

 

 
 

 

Figure 26. “Coaling the “Leviathian”, Brest, France,” Unknown, May 30, 1918. 

65 

 

 

POWER, PLACE AND POVERTY: THE CONSTRUCTION OF APPALACHIA 

AS A GEO-CULTURAL CONCEPT 

CHAPTER 3 

“Coal has always cursed the land in which it lies. When men begin to wrest it from the earth it 
leaves a legacy of foul streams, hideous slag heaps and polluted air. It peoples this transformed 

land with blind and crippled men and with widows and orphans. It is an extractive industry 

which takes all away and restores nothing. It mars but never beautifies.  

It corrupts but never purifies.” 

—  Harry M. Caudill, 1962 

 
 

 

 

 

When Harry M. Caudill set out to demonize what he saw as the perpetration of a great 

and immoral trauma to his homeland, the devastating psychological, social, economic, political 

and environmental effects of coal mining were already seemingly irreversible. For nearly a 

century, outside investors had exploited many parts of the Appalachian region, manipulated the 

people to sign away mineral rights, and through crude and devastating means, violently ripped 

the coal that had lain just below the surface of the Earth for eons. Published in 1962, Caudill’s 

Night Comes to the Cumberlands chronicles the struggle of 18 counties in southeast Kentucky 

situated in a part of Appalachia known as the Cumberland Plateau. Caudill’s well-documented 

historical research and first-hand knowledge of the area contribute a biting exactness to the 

power of his narrative. Understanding the setting for Night Comes to the Cumberlands as a place 

also helps contribute to understanding Corn’s and Rogovin’s mining photographs by providing 

the context of the place where they were made.  

Discussion in this chapter centers on addressing how the characteristics, factors and 

conditions unique to the Appalachian region may have affected Corn’s and Rogovin’s work 

there. Exploration of these characteristics, factors and conditions will contribute to understanding 

of what made the production of Corn’s and Rogovin’s photographs possible as well as 

 

66 

aesthetically and discursively different from photographs of coal mining in other regions. The 

geology of the mountains in Appalachia prescribe what types of coal are found there and how 

that coal can be mined. Understanding the geologic characteristics of Appalachia compared to 

other coal producing regions provides vital context of how conditions may have affected the 

photographs Corn and Rogovin were able to make. This chapter uses the colonial hegemonic 

structures of power crafted by coal companies and government officials concerned with 

advancing economic interests over regulation. These structures of power serve as a lens to 

compare the work of Corn and Rogovin to other photographers who worked in Appalachia. 

Specifically, the work of Marion Post Wolcott and Jack Delano will be examined to form 

knowledge of the history of poverty and labor in the region. Differences in the sub-groups of 

miners photographed by Corn and Rogovin will be discussed alongside the differences between 

mining in West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, especially how the industries were affected 

by the Great Depression (1929–1939) and economic recovery through the 1960s.  

 
 
THE EFFECTS OF GEOLOGY ON GEOGRAPHY 
 

Thrust up through geologic forces more than 500 million years ago, the Appalachian 

Mountains are the oldest on Earth.101 Hydrologic forces of erosion have dulled and lowered their 

peaks over many eons while leaving steep and ragged cliffs; however, geologists believe they 

once stood taller than the Rockies, Alps or Himalayas.102 With the mountains as its spine, the 

place that has come to be known as Appalachia is vast, many parts of it remote and isolated. 

Though its exact extent is historically a source of contention amongst geographers, 

 

101 Brooks, 1965: viii 
102 Brooks, 1965: viii 

 

67 

anthropologists, sociologists and historians working in the region, current consensus is that it 

occupies 420 counties in parts of 13 U.S. states. Beginning in southern New York state, it 

stretches down through central Pennsylvania, occupies all of West Virginia, as well as 

southeastern Ohio, the eastern parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, western Maryland, Virginia, 

North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.103 The 

landscape of Appalachia contains topographic features making the coal fields located there 

particularly challenging to access and mine. These particularities of place created unique 

physical and social conditions for Corn’s and Rogovin’s picture-making.  

The Clear Fork Valley in northeastern Tennessee, for example, winds through the 

Cumberland mountains along the Clear Fork River. The valley begins in the small town of Fonde 

just north of the Kentucky/Tennessee border approximately 77 miles due north of Knoxville. The 

valley then extends 20 miles southwest to White Oak, Tennessee, a small town 200 miles 

northeast of Nashville. Clairfield, once the heart of mining operations in the valley is situated 

right in the middle of the valley with Fonde to the northeast and White Oak to the southwest; 

also, in the valley are the towns of Pruden, Eagan and Anthras. This is where Corn spent decades 

documenting the devastating effects of coal mining. To get to the Clear Fork from Nashville, 

Corn would typically take Interstate 40 east 190 miles to LaFollette, where he would catch 

Tennessee State Route 9 north to Morely.104 From Morely, Tennessee State Route 90 cuts 

through a gap in the Cumberlands and leads to White Oak at the southwest end of the Clear Fork 

valley. State Route 90 is a treacherous span of pavement sharply ascending and descending 

around bends that tightly wind through narrow passages uncomfortably tucked against sheer 

103 Appalachian Regional Commission, 2020 
104 Corn, 2019 

 

 

68 

cliffs of exposed rock heaved up over millennia of continental movement.105 Once over the ridge 

at the town of White Oak, the road narrows to 1.5 lanes; 1 lane along certain ridges.106 Kudzu, an 

invasive vine now prevalent throughout the Appalachian mountains, can be seen creeping 

everywhere down the steep banks and along the valley floor covering everything from rocky 

outcroppings to guardrails, abandoned vehicles, even houses.  

The harsh terrain is the result of the geologic structure found across the Cumberland 

Plateau. Structure refers to the observable cracks, bends and heaves found in rock layers created 

by energy released from the Earth’s crust.107 The sharp steep embankments revealing strata 

pointing laterally up to the sky are indicative of the effect of thrust faults (Figure 27) combined 

with erosion from the thousands of rivers and streams running throughout Cumberland 

Mountains.108,109 The mountains were formed as the Earth’s continental plates were thrust 

upward along fault lines resulting in tall steep mountain ridges spaced apart by very narrow 

valleys.110 A 1936 photograph made by celebrated FSA photographer Wolcott illustrates the 

long, slender geologic structure of mountains found along Thrust faults in Appalachia. The 

photograph (Figure 28) shows the southern edge of the Cumberland Plateau near the town of 

Monteagle, Tennessee, 41 miles northwest of Chattanooga.111 From an elevated vantage point, 

Wolcott positions the camera to view across a flat transitional area at the edge of the broad  

 

105 Wilson, 1981  
106 Authors ethnographic visit November 2019 
107 Wilson, 1981: 2 
108 Wilson, 1981 
109 Brooks, 1965 
110 Wilson, 1981 
111 Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington 
 

 

69 

Figure 27. Figure of Geologic Structures, “Guide to the Geology along the Interstate Highways in Tennessee,”  

Robert Lake Wilson, Tennessee Division of Geology, 1981. 

 

 

70 

Figure 28. “View from Cumberland Plateau near Monteagle, Tennessee,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1939. 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

71 

Tennessee Valley, which stretches 129 miles at its widest point, into the West. Her use of 

foreground and background is reminiscent of O’Sullivan’s sweeping landscapes of the western 

ranges, using her position as the viewer to ground the photograph in the frame. In the foreground 

the forested mountaintop of her vantage point can be seen. An abrupt decrease in detail and 

contrast along the tree line a quarter of the way up the frame indicates a steep ridge sloping down 

to the valley at midframe. The midground of the photograph reveals the long slender structure of 

the Cumberland, and other ranges in the Appalachian Mountains. High ridges and steep faces of 

the mountains stab the frame from the right then gradually slope down at their ends like fingers 

reaching across the wide flat edge of the central Tennessee Valley. In between the three 

mountains seen in the distance are the entrances to two winding, narrow valleys. Crossing and 

diverging over hundreds of miles if seen from above, topographically the long slender 

Cumberland mountains look like a series of hastily woven lengths of rope, with harsh isolated 

valleys and hollows occupying what would be the space between the plies.      

A motorist guide published in 1981 by the Tennessee Division of Geology describes 

three geomorphic sedimentary regions of the state: the Appalachian Highlands (east), Interior 

lowlands (central), and Atlantic Plain (west). Wolcott’s photograph captures the transition 

between two of these regions, the Appalachian highlands and the interior lowlands. In the guide, 

Geologist Robert Wilson describes how the Cumberland Plateau begins with rocks gently 

dipping to the south as Wolcott’s photograph shows. He describes that moving toward the east, 

the structure abruptly reverses with rocks steeply dipping toward the northwest at high angles, 

creating deep gorges and “prominent valleys interrupt the generally rolling terrain of the 

Plateau.”112 Wilson explains that this rugged eastern region of the Cumberland Plateau was 

112 Wilson, 1981: 11  

 

 

72 

Tennessee’s major producer of soft and bituminous coal. Coal could be found between strata of 

conglomeratic sandstone, siltstone and shale; all of which are sedimentary rocks formed by 

aggregating smaller materials together though intense sub-terranean pressure.113 Because of their 

aggregated nature, sedimentary rocks are soft, brittle and fragile, which makes getting at the coal 

found between their layers delicate and dangerous work. Though the nature of mining inherently 

comes with great risk to the safety of the miners, mining coal from the brittle rock in Appalachia 

increases that risk.  

There are three major coal producing regions in the United States: The Powder River 

basin beneath Wyoming and Montana, the Illinois basin, and the Appalachian basin.114 An 

examination of two photographs illustrates how mining coal in Appalachia was different from 

other regions. The different structural characteristics of the rocks found in Appalachia changes 

the space mines can occupy between strata, and changes dramatically the space in which 

photographers can operate to document those mines. The first photograph (Figure 29) “Cager, B. 

Hendrickson,” photographer unknown, was made around 1908 at the Chicago and Big Muddy 

Mine near the town of Marion in southern Illinois.115 The photograph shows a miner with his 

hand on a signal bell next to a car full of coal on rail tracks leading out of the mine. Signal bells 

were a safety feature of the mine and used to alert miners that cars were coming down the track 

or to signal to the surface to hoist or lower cages. The significance of this photograph to the 

present investigation is in showing the mine as a space, and the infrastructure constructed to 

create that space. The coal seam at this particular mine at a depth 103 feet below the surface, was 

between seven and ten feet thick.116 The thickness of the coal seams in this region, like the one  

 

113 Wilson, 1981: 10 
114 Tulley, 1996 
115 Marion Illinois History Preservation Society 
116 Marion Illinois History Preservation Society 

 

73 

Figure 29. “Cager, B. Hendrickson,” unknown, 1908. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74 

mined near Marion, provided ample space once the coal was removed for infrastructure. To 

reduce risk of mine collapse, a robust ceiling support network was built along with miles of rail 

tracks, alert systems and mechanical lift mechanisms that aided the mining operation. The 

thickness of the seams also provided ample headroom for miners to stand upright, a condition not 

enjoyed by their counterparts in Appalachia.à  

A Corn photograph from the mid-60s, “Miner with coal driller,” offers a contrasting view 

of mining from northern Tennessee.117 The photograph (Figure 30) shows a crouching miner 

operating a large hydraulic machine used to break apart coal at the head to advance the mine 

deeper into the seam. Corn creates a sense of scale by placing the miner on the left third of the 

frame, allowing the curved wall of the coal seam—yet to be carved out—to frame him in the 

tight space in which he works. Almost perfectly mirroring the curvature of the wall, the 

hydraulic tube of the miner’s drill snakes up from the bottom of the frame, leading the eye to the 

miner and creating harmony between the pictorial conventions at work in the photograph. 

Examining the space in this photograph compared to the Marion mine shows how the thinner 

coal seams trapped between the strata of sandstone, siltstone and shale of the Cumberland 

Mountains affected the working conditions of miners in southern Appalachia. The space is much 

more confined, and in most mines the ceilings were not high enough for miners to stand upright. 

The Marion mine photograph shows support structures of thick beams running across the mine 

ceiling with a support post down to the floor to prevent collapses. While not visible in “Miner 

with coal driller,” another Corn photograph of this same scene from a different angle shows the 

types of supports common to mines in this region. “Roof driller, Grundy Co., TN” (Figure 31)  

 

à Coal seams in certain parts of Appalachia, in northern West Virginia and in Pennsylvania in particular, were 
thicker allowing for mining that resembled the mines to the west with higher ceilings and more elaborate 
infrastructure compared to Kentucky and Tennessee.  
117 Jack Corn Collection. (n.d.). Vanderbilt University Special Collections. 

 

75 

Figure 30. “Miner with coal Driller,” Jack Corn, 1968. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

76 

Figure 31. “Roof driller, Grundy Co., TN,” Jack Corn, 1968. 

 

 

 

77 

shows the kneeling using a stream of high-pressured water to cut a hole in the ceiling where a 

steel screw-jack would be placed. The change in orientation of this photograph to vertical from 

the horizontal orientation of “Miner with coal driller,” even further collapses the viewer’s 

perception of space in the mine. Corn’s use of foreground and background traps the miner 

between two planes of coal—one above him and one below—creating an almost hourglass 

volume of space for the miner to occupy. A ceiling support jack already in place can be seen to 

the left of the frame as the miner works to advance deeper into the coal seam.118  

Corn recalls miner Raymond Teague telling him not to look up, or he would hit his head 

on the roof as he descended a mine shaft for the first time in a cart pulled by a donkey. Corn 

writes, “The shaft was about five feet high, wet and dark. The only light came from carbide 

lamps on our hard hat. It was a difficult assignment, since I had to place my hands on the floor of 

the shaft to keep my balance, and my hand became covered with coal dust. If I tried to operate 

the camera, it immediately became covered with dust. I tried to wear gloves until the moment I 

chose to take a picture, then removed a glove to handle the camera.”119 In this passage Corn is 

acknowledging how site of production and photographic technology connect. Journalism scholar 

Brian Creech argues that how and when photographic technologies are deployed are vital 

considerations in constructing meaning around the photographs those technologies create.120  

Corn began his career using a 4 x 5 Speed Graphix, still a newspaper industry standard at the 

time, but was an early adopter of the 35mm Nikon F series (Figure 32), which was introduced in  

 

 

 

118 Jack Corn Collection. (n.d.). Vanderbilt University Special Collections. 
119 Corn, 2000: 14 
120 Creech, 2017 

 

78 

 

Figure 32. Jack Corn’s Nikon FM2 with motorized film drive, Vanderbilt University Special Collections. 

 

1959.121,122 The portability of the Nikon F made it ideal for shooting in a variety of difficult 

situations, such as both outside and inside coal mines. Its lightweight and compact design made 

it possible for Corn to make two of his favorite photographs on this one assignment. The first 

photograph (Figure 33) is of Teague in broad daylight wearing a WWII Army Jacket and 

smoking a cigarette before entering the mine. Placing Teague forward in the frame, Corn uses 

forced perspective to shrink the appearance of the small mine opening behind him, which 

reinforces the cramped space of the mine. The nearly straight posture of the donkey’s back 

extending from Teague’s right shoulder along with the curved railcar tracks lead the viewer’s eye  

121 Corn, 2000 
122 Corn, 2019 

 

 

79 

Figure 33. “Teague and donkey, Doghole mine,” Jack Corn, 1964. 

 

 

 

80 

to the mine’s opening. Crumbling soil and ridged rocks occupy the entire top half of the frame, 

emphasizing the weight of the massive mountain over the miner’s head and the constant risk of 

collapse. The second photograph (Figure 34) is the very next frame on the roll. Corn made this 

photograph by hand holding the camera with a long shutter speed exposed to the light of 

Teague’s carbide lamp. The limited light creates dramatic contrast. Teague’s face is bright 

against the darkness of the doghole mine, which further confines the space. His eyes are fixed 

and arms raised as he examines a large lump of coal donning the “smile that all diggers of 

minerals from the Earth have when they hit a mother lode.”123 Corn has created great contrast in 

these two photographs, both in terms of aesthetics and narrative, made a relatively short time 

apart. Lit by the morning light, the first photograph is bright in appearance, but somber in tone. 

Void of any detail, the deep blackness of the mine entrance emits a magnetism from its darkened 

depths, pulling attention away from Teague, whose expression shows concern as he contemplates 

entering the doghole. In contrast, the second photograph, taken deep within the mine is dark, yet 

it is much more cheerful in tone. The intensity of the carbide light—burning so bright that, like 

the mine entrance in the previous photograph, is also void of detail—is able to illuminate 

Teague’s expression of pride and wonder in the seam of coal he has uncovered. Corn’s ability to 

create such a strong connection between Teague’s gaze and the piece of coal he holds implies in 

that moment, the darkness and danger he was contemplating outside in the previous photograph 

were worth it—and that nothing else mattered but the coal. The limitations of space dictated by  

 

123 Corn, 2000 

 

 

81 

 

Figure 34. “Miner holding lump of coal,” Jack Corn, 1964. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

82 

geography and geology were not the only factors that could have influenced the pictures that 

Corn and Rogovin made in Appalachia. The histories of the people, and the cultural perceptions 

of outsiders to the region are also essential to understanding their bodies of work. 

HISTORICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF RURAL APPALACHIA 

“Once I had a girl on Rocky Top, 
half bear, the other half cat; 
Wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop, 
I still dream about that.” 
 

Popularized by country music pioneer Buck Owens, these lyrics from the song Good ’Ol 

Rocky Top suggest a poetic yet disparaging view of Appalachia as a strange land of lesser 

people.à Born in Texas, Owens helped bring a commercially idealized version of Appalachian 

culture to the mainstream through the long-running show Hee Haw, which he co-hosted with 

Roy Clark. Though Clark was a native of Virginia, the show—which ran for 26 seasons between 

1969 and 1995—has been criticized as helping to advance and popularize the ‘hillbilly’ 

archetype of an Appalachian.124 Flanked between Rocky Top and the neighboring Clear Fork 

Valley of Tennessee to the south and coal fields of West Virginia to the northeast, is Harry 

Caudill’s home in Letcher County, Kentucky. All located in the Cumberland Plateau, the areas of 

West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky where Corn and Rogovin worked share the same history 

and fate as the communities in Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands. Caudill’s work, as a 

document, offers valuable insight to the social, economic and environmental conditions that 

existed when these two photographers began their own documentation of these areas through the 

production of photographs. It really is not possible to fully understand the work of Corn and 

 

à Good ’Ol Rocky Top was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant in 1967 and first recorded by the Osborne 
Brothers. 
124 York and Rubin, 2018 

 

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Rogovin without examining these bodies of work against the context Caudill provides through 

his exhaustive construction of historical narrative.  

With its vastness, American writer Rudy Abramson argues that Appalachia is more than a 

distinctive geographic area; it has emerged as a cultural concept not bound by political 

boundaries drawn to distinguish one county or state from the next.125 Abramson writes, “the 

limits of Appalachia are a subject of reoccurring rumination, though in every conception the 

region reaches from the Deep South far beyond the Mason-Dixon Line into the North, assuring 

that both its political and cultural histories are as complex as its Landscape.”126 Yet the nuanced 

complexity of these histories have often been boiled down into a geo-cultural caricature that 

historian Richard Drake argues is both over-simplistic and the product of a “few northern 

writers” at the end of the 19th-century. In her 2018 documentary “Hillbilly,” which examines 

representations of Appalachia in pop culture, activist and filmmaker Ashley York suggests coal 

played a major role in the emergence of negative stereotypical caricatures of Appalachians in 

popular discourse. York grew up in Meathouse Holler, located in Pike County Kentucky, which 

shares a border with Caudill’s Letcher County in the heart of Appalachian coal country. She 

argues that the stereotypes that emerged about Appalachians were deliberately constructed and 

propagated to diminish them as an obstacle to extracting the region’s coal and timber.127 

Lessening the peoples of Appalachia to claim, in the name of progress, the resources of their land 

mirrors the colonizing approach of European imperialism Pratt criticizes in Imperial Eyes. From 

northern planter William Byrd II’s characterization of North Carolinians as lazy “lubbers,” to 

shows like the Beverly Hillbillies and Hee Haw, Drake writes that “from an early date, people 

 

125 Abramson, 2006: xx 
126 Abramson, 2006: xxi 
127 York and Rubin, 2018 

 

84 

have seen the region in an unusual and sometimes disturbing way.”128 The way Appalachians are 

seen historically enables the colonial-settler logic that outsiders needed to intervene in order for 

the region to be successful, and that local inhabitants were unable, or unfit, to fully develop and 

utilize the resources located in and on their homelands. If Appalachians were viewed as lazy, 

ignorant and undeserving of the wealth contained in their lands, there would be far less outcry to 

outsider interventions and to industrialists exploiting the region.129 Corn admits that trying to 

photograph against well-established colonial discourse was challenging and he was warned early 

on by Clairfield postmistress Louise Adams not to fall into the trap set by other outsiders of how 

Appalachia and Appalachians should be represented.130 Corn said that moving away from 

traditional visual mining narratives was intentional. “Everything in photography is a conscious 

decision. I wanted to show the whole story of how they lived.”131 This included showing where 

they lived.  

 
THE EXPLOITIVE CONVERSION OF THE MOUNTAINEER TO PROLETARIAN 

For generations prior to the U.S. Civil War, the Cumberland Mountains, like most of 

Appalachia, were sparsely peopled by clans of Irish, Welsh and Scottish immigrants; freed or 

escaped indentured workers; and adventurous colonists wanting to escape the hustle of the 

burgeoning eastern seaboard.132 Collectively these groups came to be known as mountaineers — 

they were hearty, intrepid and self-reliant, surviving off their land through small-scale sustenance 

farming and livestock herding. In the decades immediately after the Civil War, violence 

continued throughout the Cumberland Plateau in the form of clan feuds, such as the infamous 

 

128 Drake, 2001: xi 
129 York and Rubin, 2018 
130 Corn, 2000 
131 Corn, 2019 
132 Caudill, 1962: 6–7 

 

85 

war between the Hatfield clan of West Virginia and the McCoys of Kentucky (Figure 35); some 

feuds lasted a generation or more and distracted the mountaineers from their pre-war self-

reliance.  

Investors from the Northeast began to see vast economic opportunity in the unspoiled 

timber of the Cumberland Mountains. Money from timber felling began to trickle into the 

plateau, and for the first time the mountaineer acquired a taste for commercially produced goods. 

Caudill writes that the Cumberland mountaineer possessed a “fiercely independent and 

uncooperative mentality” to the extent that they “tended offhandedly to reject all discussion and 

consideration of ideas in the abstract.”133 The rejection of abstract ideas unfortunately included 

notions of capitalism, which made the mountaineer vulnerable to exploitation. Investors sent 

teams of lawyers down to the mountains to acquire long-term, unrestricted timber and mineral 

rights at a fraction of what they were worth. In the essay “Romantic Appalachia, or, Poverty 

Pays if you Ain’t Poor,” poet and activist Don West suggests that county and state governments, 

located in larger more populated valleys, stood idly by and did little to intervene in corporate 

exploitation of the mountaineers. He argues that the complacency was intentional and retaliatory 

for the mountainous regions of the south sending soldiers north to fight with the Union army 

during the U.S. Civil War.à,134  

After extensive expansion of railroads into the region, the turn of the 20th century saw 

large-scale mining operations spread across the plateau, from West Virginia, down through 

eastern Kentucky to northeast Tennessee.135 Mining companies set up towns to support  

 

133 Caudill, 1962: 52 
à In total the southern Appalachian mountain regions sent nearly 200,000 men north to fight with Union armies for 
emancipation. 
134 West, 1972a 
135 History of Claiborne County 

 

86 

 
Figure 35. “Sam McCoy’s grave in KY,” Sam McCoy of the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud is buried  

on a hillside overlooking Tomkinsville, KY. Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

 

87 

mining operations that included building roads, schools, houses, post offices, power plants and 

company commissaries. Mountaineers were hired as miners and with their newly acquired desire 

for material goods, the mountaineers were happy to abandon their log-cabins and self-reliant life 

for modern conveniences, like electricity and plumbing.136 However, the mountaineers were 

surrendering more than their self-reliance. West argues they were willingly surrendering their 

agency and slowly slipping into the oppressive bonds of colonial forces.137 With their modest 

earnings from dangerous and exhausting labor, they surrendered to coal companies money for 

rent, utilities, and food and supplies purchased at the company commissaries. Coal company 

bosses hand-selected sheriffs, mayors, judges and other public officials that were sympathetic to 

the company’s interests and hired doctors willing to turn a blind eye to the dangers mining 

posed. Every aspect of the miner’s lives was controlled by their employers.138 The colonial 

hegemonic apparatus imposed by coal companies was reminiscent of the indentureship the 

miners’ ancestors sought to escape by fleeing into the mountainous frontier nearly two centuries 

earlier.  

The structure of power created by coal companies is easily seen in one photograph Corn 

made in May 1974 for the Documerica project, which will be discussed in greater detail in 

chapter seven. The photograph is of the company town of Red Ash, owned by the Raven Red 

Ash Coal Co. in Tazewell County, Virginia. The photograph (Figure 36) shows a row of  

 

136 Caudill, 1962: 93–111 
137 West, 1972b 
138 Caudill, 1962: 93–111 

 

88 

 
Figure 36. “Old Coal Company Town of Red Ash, Virginia, near Richards in Tazewell County,” Jack Corn, Documerica, 1974. 
Original caption reads: Old Coal Company Town of Red Ash, Virginia, near Richards in Tazewell County in the Southwestern 
Part of the State. This Is a Classic Picture of a Company Town with a Railroad in the Valley Flanked by Miners’ Homes. The 
Coal Mine Superintendent’s Home Is Up the Hill in the Upper Left Portion of the Picture. The Separation Is Symbolic of the 

Caste System Which Once Rule (sic) in the Mining Towns, But Which Is Now in the Process of Change. The Road Is Made of Red 

Dog, a Mining Byproduct. 

 
shoddily constructed clapboard houses along a dirt road at the bottom of a winding valley. A line 

of coupled, open-top rail cars laden with the day’s haul of extracted coal bends around the tracks 

across the road from the houses, serving as a constant reminder to the miners that coal was ever  

present in their lives. Behind the houses, a row of trees sequesters the miners from a steep slope, 

with a road carved out of its side and paved with mining byproduct called red dog.à Perched on 

top of the slope high above sits the house of the mine superintendent. Clad with gleaming white 

siding the alabaster fortress looms over the valley and its inhabitants as the ‘big boss’ keeps a 

à Red Dog is a nonvolatile aggregate material that is the product of coal oxidation.  

 

 

89 

watchful eye on all the company’s assets. The angle from which Corn composed this photograph 

reveals its isolation from the rest of town and fortifies the big boss in a position of authority 

while reinforcing a hierarchical structure of power the town’s design is meant to impose. This 

same use of elevation to separate class and power can be found in other mining towns Corn 

photographed, and in earlier photographs taken by Wolcott and Delano, who photographed 

Appalachian coal miners as a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress 

Administration (WPA) program.  

 
APPALACHIA THROUGH DEPRESSION AND WAR 

 

 

While Hine’s work in Pennsylvanian anthracite mines for the NCLC helped establish the 

somber, soot-covered stoicism that embodied the miner aesthetic, in the two decades that 

followed, Wolcott and Delano took that aesthetic and slightly expanded the view. Stepping back 

from Hine’s texture-centric aesthetic of the miner’s work, Wolcott and Delano began to crack the 

mystique of the anonymous laborer to introduce brief and scattered glimpses of life outside the 

mine. This broader approach to documenting the Appalachian miner was necessary to achieve  

the overarching mission of the FSA in illustrating how the work of the federal government was 

helping to improve the lives of Americans in the Depression era.139 Dependent on so many other 

U.S. and global industries, coal was not immune to the bleak economic conditions of the 1930s, 

though the industry was somewhat insulated due to its importance to so many facets of modern 

society. Annual coal production fell from its height of 678 million tons in 1928 to 390 tons in 

1932.140 Being the largest coal producing region at the time, Appalachian coal production was hit 

 

139 Stott, 1986 
140 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1960 
 

 

90 

the hardest, but not equally across all areas of the region. This is where the conditions in the sub-

regions of Appalachia where Corn and Rogovin photographed began to resemble each other less 

as the disparity between miners and their communities began to emerge. Both before and after 

the Great Depression, West Virginia was a much larger producer of coal than Tennessee, or even 

Kentucky. Historically, the state’s entire economy had been based on the mining, refinement and 

transportation of coal. Examination of Delano’s WPA work in Pennsylvania and Wolcott’s FSA 

work in West Virginia foreshadows the socio-economic cleft that will discursively separate 

Rogovin’s work highlighting working mining communities in West Virginia from Corn’s 

photographs of communities where mining operations were mostly abandoned.  

What mainly separated the sub-regions again comes down to geology and the specific 

types of coal found in each coal field. Wadleigh’s coal manual indexes and describes in great 

detail the chemical and physical characteristics—everything from moisture content to density, to 

elemental purity for each type of coal found in each region and discusses the specific use each 

type of coal was best suited for. For example, Wadliegh explains that due to its low-to-medium 

levels of volatile, low ash content and high B.T.U output, the best bunker coal for use in the 

powering of steamships comes from eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, northern Alabama 

and the area around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.141 Containing a low moisture content and high 

levels of purity, the abundant bituminous coal found in West Virginian coal fields could easily be 

refined for a variety of uses. The versatility of West Virginian coal helped the state weather the 

Great Depression and actually experience growth in coal production in the early 1930s. In 1920, 

with a workforce of 87,000 miners, West Virginia produced more than $193 million worth of  

 

141 Wadleigh, 1921: 100–101 

 

 

91 

     

 

 

 

Figure 37. “Miners’ children going home from store and post office, Omar, West Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. 

 

coal from 926 mines.142 Although 240 mines had closed by 1930, West Virginia produced more 

coal with approximately 10,000 more miners than it had a decade earlier.143  

Wolcott’s images of miners and mountaineers in West Virginia reflect life in a state 

where employment remained somewhat stable during the Great Depression. Photos such as a 

series made in Omar, West Virginia in 1938 (Figure 37) show the banality of seemingly middle- 

class children walking home after school. They stop and play along their way down a set of 

railroad tracks, smiling and laughing as they interact. Other Wolcott photographs of the region 

such as her view of the Cumberland Plateau discussed earlier, or a series she made in the fertile 

farmlands of Virginia (Figure 38) show a landscape of promise and prosperity in an uncertain 

time. But there is one group of images she made at a coal camp near Chaplin, West Virginia in 

September of 1938 that is particularly revealing of the dynamics of social and economic 

conditions inside West Virginia coal camps in the 1930s. Photographs from Chaplin include 

scenes depicting a group of men and boys gathered on the porch of the commissary playing 

games (Figure 39), or miners giving one another haircuts (Figure 40) or the seemingly ordinary 

façade of a school. The banality of Wolcott’s scenes is indicative of what writer William Stott 

suggests challenged photographers working in the era: that the true effects of the Depression  

142 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1923: 1271 
143 Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1932: 845 

 

 

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Figure 38. “Haystacks and shocks of corn in field near Marion, Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott 1941. 

 

 

Figure 39. Coal miners card gambling Saturday afternoon on porch of company store, Chaplin, West Virginia,”  

Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. 

 

93 

Figure 40. “Miners often give haircuts on front porch. The “Patch,” Chaplin, West Virginia,”  

Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. 

 

 

 

94 

were hard to see. Workers still employed carried on in life with a relative sense of normalcy, and 

those out of work tended to slip from sight, absent from public view.144 The sense of normalcy 

conveyed in photographs of the haircut, the game and the school is key to understanding the 

harsh reality revealed in looking at the images collectively—that mining regardless of 

employment status is a hard, and in many cases impoverished, life.  

Wolcott’s portraits of miners in Champlin show the contradictory nature of having a job 

during the Depression yet remaining impoverished as many miners were, especially black and 

immigrant miners. One photograph (Figure 41), titled “Coal miner and two of his seven 

children,” shows a black miner and his family at home. The miner’s physique appears lean, and 

his face is gaunt, indicative of laborious work. Dressed in corduroys and a collarless buttoned-

down shirt, he leans against the coal-burning furnace as two of his daughters sit contentedly by 

his side. A decorative rug can be seen in front of the furnace covering the wide, pine plank 

floorboards in the bottom right corner of the frame. While the miner’s left arm rests on the 

stovepipe, his right arm spreads along a shelf adorned with a decorative floral cloth and two 

small delicate baptism pillows. Above the shelf hangs a mirror flanked on either side by what 

appear to be two handmade hanging floral arrangements. What is haunting about the image is 

what appears behind the subjects. In the mirror, Wolcott’s reflection can be seen giving the 

viewer a rare glimpse at both the gazer and the gaze. In reality, in their physical presences, she 

would have most likely been looking directly at the miner and his two daughters, and them 

looking back at her. What appears in the photograph, however, is quite different and 

symbolically striking. Here the miner and his children are in view while the photographer, gazing 

from a place of privilege, looks away from the scene. Adding to the complexity of the  

144 Stott, 1986: 92–94  

 

 

95 

Figure 41. “Coal miner and two of his seven children. He has worked in the mines for about twenty years. Chaplin, West 

Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. 

 

 

96 

Figure 42. “Coal miner’s wife (note goiter) and two children. Chaplin, West Virginia,” Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

97 

photograph are the duplicate posters of a white woman riding a horse, that have been turned 

sideways and leaned against the wall behind the furnace.  

Examining another Wolcott photograph of this family gives clues to the posters’ purpose. 

In the photograph titled “Coal miner's wife (note goiter) and two children,” à (Figure 42) the 

miner’s wife is shown cooking in the family’s kitchen while two of the children play; all three of  

their gazes seem to lead to a white baby doll laying upon the floor. Behind the woman, holes are 

visible through the kitchen wall and pieces of tattered cardboard are seen tacked to the exposed 

timber studs in an attempt to patch them. The posters in the first photograph are likely serving 

the same function. Closer examination of the prints shows the woman next to the horse raising a 

bottle to her parted lips. The iconic shape of the bottle reveals that the poster is actually a Coca-

Cola ad (Figure 43) from 1937 and was most likely discarded from the company commissary. 

Painted by commercial artist Haddon Sundblom—who was responsible for illustrating some of 

the most iconic pieces of advertising imagery of the early 20th century such as the Quaker Oats 

man and Santa Claus drinking a Coke—the ad reinforces notions of disposable consumerism, 

and the utility of its new-found use in the miner’s home serves as a reminder of the societal 

norms of capitalistic consumption the family living in poverty is failing to meet. This discourse 

can also be found in another of Wolcott’s images from Champlin (Figure 44). An Italian 

immigrant is shown resting on his bed and removing his boots while smoking a pipe after a shift 

in the mine. Trousers and a coat can be seen hanging from the ceiling in the top left of the frame, 

and a pair of black oxfords sit on the floor tucked beneath the bed. The wall behind the man is 

papered with newspaper pages filled with advertisements. One  

à The title of the photograph makes note of the presence of a goiter on the wife’s neck, which is an enlargement of 
the thyroid gland typically caused by an iron deficiency from poor nutrition.  

 

 

98 

      

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Figure 43. Painting by Haddon Sundblom (left), and its use in a 1937 Coca-Cola advertising poster. 

 

 

99 

Figure 44. Coal miner (Italian) resting and smoking his pipe after coming home from work. “The Patch,”  

Chaplin, West Virginia. Marion Post Wolcott, 1938. 

 

 

 

 

 

100 

ad is for an electric refrigerator with an icebox and another features the angled front grille and 

sleek sweeping fenders of a passenger car, both luxuries he would not have been able to afford.  

Despite the direness of their living conditions, these miners were able to squeak out a meager 

living in an era when many could not.  

As in West Virginia production of anthracite and bituminous coal, Pennsylvania also 

experienced some growth in the early 1930s; however, the opposite trajectory befell Tennessee, 

and the miners in the Clearfork Valley were hit hard. In 1920 Tennessee’s 10,000 coal miners 

produced $14 million worth of coal from 107 mines, but mining operations by the end of the 

decade had all but halted, not even registering as a coal-producing state in the U.S. Census 

mining report published in 1932.145,146 The vast majority of mines in Tennessee closed, and coal 

companies pulled their resources from the towns they had built, abandoning the miners living 

there, but not their rights to the land. Toward the end of the 1930s those mines still operating 

were doing so with a reduced number of miners, and with fewer mine engineers. Fewer 

engineers meant a reduction in safety standards, resulting in increased numbers of mining 

accidents and casualties.147 Coal companies began seeing the miners as a liability rather than an 

asset, blaming their demands for fair wages for the decline in company profit. The once-pleasant 

and tenable relationship between mine officials and miners deteriorated, often into violence that 

was exacerbated by the presence of union organizers. New, more mechanized techniques, such as 

strip mining and mountain top removal, were developed to extract the same volume of coal from 

seams closer to the surface which required far less personnel.148 Whereas Wolcott’s photographs 

show the normalcy of business as usual in West Virginia, Delano focused on the more harsh 

 

145 Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1923: 1271 
146 Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1932: 845 
147 Caudill, 1962: 165–187 
148 Caudill, 1962: 165–187 

 

101 

reality of unemployment in the mining industry in certain parts of Pennsylvania. While overall 

coal production remained steady, and even grew in parts of the state, mechanization did result in 

putting many miners out of work during the decades-long Depression. These miners, Delano 

writes, were “left with no other source of income, were going into the mines illegally and 

extracting coal to sell wherever they could. This practice was called bootleg mining.”149 

Delano’s photographs are gritty and show a real mastery of composition and use of 

contrast and resemble the stoic, sooty aesthetic found in Hine’s portraiture. Delano was one of 

more than 40,000 artists hired through the WPA’s Federal Project Number One, which included 

the Federal Art Project, Federal Music Project, Federal Theater Project, Federal Writers’ Project 

and the Historical Records Survey. The goal of the project was to provide direct assistance to 

artists instead of relying upon the distribution of grants through traditional cultural intuitions that 

received federal funding.150 Based in Philadelphia, as a WPA artist, Delano focused his efforts 

on portraiture and architectural photography in the anthracite region of Schuylkill County, 

Pennsylvania, located between Harrisburg and Allentown. Delano arranged 68 of his prints made 

in 1938 into two spiral bound albums; 39 photographs in volume one and 29 in volume two, both 

housed at the Library of Congress. Volume one begins with a brief introduction by Delano that 

reads: “Included in these two volumes are some photographs of Pennsylvania’s Lower 

Anthracite region. They were taken as part of a study of legitimate and bootleg mining in the 

area. Most of my three weeks there were spent in Schuylkill County, in and around the towns of 

Pottsville, Minersville, Shenandoah and Mahanoy.”151 Opposite the introduction on the inside 

cover is the head of a miner, hand-cut from a photographic print and pasted on a map of eastern 

 

149 Delano, 1997 
150 Larson, 1939 
151 Delano, 1938 

 

102 

central Pennsylvania with an outline of Schuylkill County, (Figure 45). The rest of the album 

contains a series of photographs of mining structures, photographs of miners at work with 

captions explaining the process of mining, general views of the town, and a sequence of pictures 

showing a group of nicely dressed men riding in a wood-boxed flatbed truck to a rally at the state 

capital, with the caption “miners on their way to Harrisburg.” Volume two is shorter and seems 

more deliberate in Delano’s selection and placement of photographs. Photographs are in general 

tighter in crop and offer contrast from one page to the next between legitimate and bootleg 

mining operations. For example, one two-page spread (Figure 46) shows a mining foreman on 

the left, his lamp lit illuminating the mine phone he was talking on. On the right is a group of 

bootleg miners emerging from the darkness of a bootleg hole, their lamps off suggesting the 

covertness of their operation. By 1938 the estimated number of bootleg miners in Pennsylvania 

had grown to more than 7,000, operating out as many as 1,965 bootleg holes.152 But bootleg 

mine operations were not isolated to Pennsylvania; they were widespread across Appalachia 

during the Depression as out-of-work miners looked for ways to make money. Marie Cirillo, 

founder and former director of the Clear Fork Community Institute, said a lot of out-of-work 

miners in Tennessee, like Teague, joined the Army toward the end of the Depression.153  

When the U.S. entered WWII, the demand for coal once again increased to fuel the 

industries producing machinery and goods for the nation’s war effort. In 1942 the U.S. 

government purchased more than 59,000 acres of farmland in the Bethel Valley 27 miles west of 

Knoxville, Tennessee. By the end of 1943, a massive complex of windowless buildings had 

emerged behind heavily guarded barbed-wire fences. Operated by the Site X-10, known today as 

the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), is where on Nov. 4, 1943 scientists from the  

 

152 Lauck, 1938 
153 Cirillo, 2019 

 

103 

Figure 45. Inside cover of Jack Delano’s first album of miners from Schuylkill county, 1938. 

 

 

 

Figure 46. Inside pages showing contrasting views of mining operation from album 2, Jack Delano, 1938. 

 
 

 

104 

University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory successfully converted uranium into plutonium 

for the first time, making ORNL the world’s first operating nuclear reactor.154 The work being 

done at ORNL required a tremendous amount of electricity, and to provide it the Tennessee 

Valley Authority (TVA) needed tremendous amounts of coal. The TVA was created in 1933 by 

an act of Congress “to improve the navigability and to provide for the flood control of the 

Tennessee River; to provide for reforestation and the proper use of marginal lands in the 

Tennessee Valley; to provide for the agricultural and industrial development of said valley; to 

provide for the national defense by the creation of a corporation for the operation of government 

properties at and near Muscle Shoals in the State of Alabama, and for other purposes.”155 The 

other purposes being the generation of electricity for areas along the Tennessee River Valley 

including all of Tennessee and parts of neighboring Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, 

North Carolina and Virginia. Needing more power than could be produced by its hydroelectric 

facilities, TVA invested heavily in coal-fired plants, and turned to the Clear Fork Valley, 70 

miles to the north, to provide the coal.156 With much of the work force fighting in Europe and the 

Pacific theater, the TVA heavily sanctioned the mechanization of mining operations in northeast 

Tennessee. 

The TVA’s mechanization of the Clear Fork Valley didn’t happen in isolation. Emerging 

from the Great Depression, coal companies found themselves profitable again amidst a new coal 

boom. To meet demand, companies expanded surface mine operations rather than resuming 

production in deep shaft mines that were twice as expensive to operate.157 Mining operations 

across Appalachia were becoming more mechanized, leading to widespread poverty on the 

 

154 Oak Ridge National Laboratory Historical Archives 
155 Tennessee Valley Authority Historical Archives 
156 Cirillo, 2019 
157 Caudill, 1962 

 

105 

Cumberland Plateau as miners had no work to return to after the war. The 1950s saw mass 

outward migration as former miners who were still able to work left for mining and 

manufacturing jobs to the north, or in other parts of Appalachia.158 By 1947 Tennessee once 

again was registering as a coal producing state in government reports on the industry, producing 

7,644,000 tons of coal that year.159 The states’ increase in production however, did not mean an 

abundant return of jobs. Claiborne and Campbell counties—where the Clear Fork Valley is 

located—were operating with a mining force of 37.2 and 33.1 percent of what it had been in the 

1920s.160 

The Clear Fork Valley had more than 30,000 residents at the zenith of coal production 

there in the 1920s. Two years after Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands was published, 

when Corn traveled there for the first time in 1964, there were less than 1,200. 161 Among those 

who remained were WWII veterans Teague, and postmistress Adams. It’s the people of 

Appalachia, and their land, that Caudill wrote in advocacy for. Night Comes to the Cumberlands 

is a poetic and prophetic cry to save a region that cannot be generalized as being any one thing. 

Appalachia is not entirely rural or urban; it is not entirely northern or southern; it is not 

politically homogenous; not entirely economically depressed; or uniformly lacking access to 

educational or health related resources as so many historians, sociologists, psychologists, 

political scientists, journalists, medical clinicians have claimed it to be. Appalachia, like every 

other place, and Appalachians, like any other community of people, are subject to struggles in 

particular social contexts at specific historical moments, just as Stott wrote about. The struggles 

that Corn and Rogovin encountered in coal mining communities of the Cumberland Plateau were 

 

158 Caudill, 1962: 305–324 
159 United States Coal Mines Administration, 1947: xii 
160 United States Coal Mines Administration, 1947: 7 
161 Corn: 2000 

 

106 

different at different times. While Hine, Delano, Lee and Wolcott did introduce new discourse to 

visual narratives celebrating the coal industry and coal’s importance to society, the meaning 

those discourses added to what could be known about mining at the time was relatively minor in 

scope and narrow in view compared to the later work of Corn and Rogovin. Though Corn and 

Rogovin both faced similar conditions, the two took very different approaches to their subjects, 

resulting in very different bodies of work.  

 

107 

MAKING A MODEL VALLEY: EXAMINING THE POWER OF INSTITUTIONS 

THROUGH APPARATUSES USED BY THE CORPORATION, ACTIVISTS AND MEDIA 
IN ADVANCING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDAS (1920–1970) 

CHAPTER 4 

 

“Yes the southern mountains have been missionarized, researched, studied, surveyed, 

romanticized, dramatized, hillbillyized, Dogpatchized and povertyized again. And some of us 
who are native and have known this hard living all our lives and our grandpaw’s life before, 

marvel that our ‘missionary’ friends discover us so often.” 

 

 

 
 

—  Don West, 1972 

The son of north Georgia sharecroppers, historian, poet and activist Don West held a 

pragmatic view of Appalachia. Devil’s Hollow, where he grew up, like many of the small 

unincorporated towns in the mountains, valleys and plateaus of Appalachia, is isolated and poor 

and its people bound in servitude to the powers of the industrial Northeast. West spent his life 

trying to illuminate colonial-settler logics he saw as an oppressing force and advocating for the 

people of the region. He argued that only a “restructuring of the system of ownership, production 

and distribution of wealth”162 could solve the problem of poverty in Appalachia. It is from this 

perspective he wrote the essay, “Romantic Appalachia, or, Poverty Pays if you Ain’t Poor,” 

which included the passage above. The essay was published in pamphlet form and sold for $.25 

by the Appalachian South Folklife Center, an advocacy center he founded with his wife Connie 

West in 1964. Located in Pipestone, West Virginia, the center provides educational and cultural 

support and opportunities to disadvantaged populations through “the restoration of self-respect 

and human dignity lost as a consequence of the region’s colonial relationship with industrial 

America.”163 West’s essay outlines the waves of outside attention Appalachia has received 

throughout history with each new generation of activists and advocates, opportunists and 

162 West, 1972b: 3 
163 Appalachian South Folklife Center 

 

 

108 

industrialists drawn to the region. It is during one of these renewed periods of interest in 

Appalachia that Corn and Rogovin embarked upon their picture-making projects there. Poverty 

was widespread, infrastructure deteriorating and health and education resources inadequate.164,165 

Corn’s and Rogovin’s work shed light on these issues, and as much as their work was driven by 

discourse from a renewed outside interest in Appalachia, it also helped promulgate that 

discourse.  

West was just one actor operating within the institution of native Appalachian activists, 

his poetry and prose the apparatus he used to advance his message. But the far-reaching network 

of Appalachian activists West was a part of was just one institution at work in the region trying 

to exert influence within the context of multiple social issues. It is critical, then, to understand 

the interconnectedness of social and economic issues as all the agents, actors and institutions 

operating in Appalachia contributed to a collision of interests and a struggle for power over 

discourse during the period Corn and Rogovin were making photographs in the region. Poverty, 

the environment, public health, and the economy are not issues that can easily be untangled from 

one another. This chapter explores the relationship between Corn’s and Rogovin’s photography 

and forms of activism and institutional power in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Discussion of how their 

photographs of Appalachia intersect with civil rights, the Vietnam War, women’s rights and the 

environment contributes to one of the main arguments of this dissertation. Through their 

photography Corn and Rogovin were participating in a form of activism. The images they made 

were more than just documentation, they were a type of visual protest against the social and 

environmental conditions they encountered in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. Focusing 

discussion around power exerted through institutional structures, the photographs of Corn and 

 

164 West, 1972a 
165 Caudill, 1962 

 

109 

Rogovin help illustrate the following contexts: the corporation and public relations, the 

government and policy, society and social action, and the press and newsgathering. These 

institutions exercised Foucauldian notions of power rooted in the specifics of their technology, 

their operational apparatuses and the moment in history that the power was exercised. The power 

of institutions influenced picture-making in a variety of ways, all contributing to the visual 

discourse of mining in Appalachia.  

A SUBJECTIVE COMPLACENCY: THE RISE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS IN THE U.S. 

Historically the mainstream U.S. press has had a complicated and at times contradictory 

role in advancing environmental and economic narratives and discourse. The success of public 

relation councilors (PRCs) in supplying information to the news media during World War I led 

to more and more institutions closing off access to individual sources. Placing PRCs between the 

journalist and individuals with information allowed institutions the opportunity to shape the 

information and construct their own narrative of reality.166 By the 1920s, PRCs were a dominant 

force in the news production process, and on any given day were directly responsible for as 

much as 60 percent of the stories appearing in major metro newspapers like the New York 

Times.167 The emergence of the PRC led to an abandonment of pure factual reporting, replaced 

by more interpretive and subjective views of reality presented in the news—a reality constructed 

in part by the PRC. Troubled by this development, conservative columnist Walter Lippman 

offers a full-throated criticism of democratic society, and the role PRCs play in the creation of 

irrational perceptions of reality, in his 1922 book Public Opinion. Lippman writes:  

“The development of the publicity man is a clear sign that the facts of modern life do not 
spontaneously take shape in which they can be known. They must be given a shape by 

166 Schudson, 1978: 134–144 
167 Schudson, 1978: 144 

 

 

110 

somebody, and since in the daily routine reporters cannot give a shape to facts, and since 
there is little disinterested organization of intelligence, the need for some formulation is 
being met by the interested parties.”168 
 

One of the earliest, and arguably most notable, realizations of Lippman’s observation is the 

National Electric Light Association’s (NELA) 1920s campaign to prevent the creation of U.S. 

public utilities. A trade association for emerging utility holding companies, NELA set out to 

persuade the public that private utilities could offer better, cheaper electricity more efficiently to 

more people than public utilities.  

The NELA campaign was launched shortly after Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot 

signed the Giant Power Survey Act in 1923 to study the creation of a public utility to bring 

electricity to the 90 percent of rural Pennsylvania without it at the time.169 NELA enlisted the 

help of Samuel Insull, a British-born utility magnate from Chicago to coordinate their efforts. 

Insull used the connections and experience he had gained advising the British propaganda office 

during World War I to execute a multi-stage public relations campaign.170 Insull hired scientists 

to produce credible-looking empirical studies that argued public utilities were too expensive and 

ineffective at producing electricity, which contradicted the prevailing consensus of academics at 

the time.171 This research aimed to “kill the municipal ownership idea” and was distributed to the 

public through advertising campaigns and news articles pitched to journalists by NELA PRCs.172 

The campaign also had academic and educational components that funded major research 

projects and endowed economic departments at universities across the U.S. and partnered with 

book publishers to alter narratives critical of private utilities in textbooks.173 Science historian 

 

168 Lippman, 1922: 218 
169 Oreskes, 2015 
170 Schudson, 1978: 143 
171 Oreskes, 2015 
172 Oreskes, 2015: 10 
173Oreskes, 2015 

 

111 

Naomi Oreskes argues that the short-term benefit of squashing the Giant Power project in 

Pennsylvania and other similar proposals was not NELA’s ultimate goal. It wanted to create an 

alternate reality in which the facts supported their interests, shaped public opinion, and through 

its educational efforts, molded the thinking of generations to come that any “government 

involvement in the marketplace was a threat to freedom, despite well-documented evidence to 

the contrary elsewhere in the world.”174 Despite prompting a Federal Trade Commission 

investigation, the tactics used by NELA served as a template for other industries and institutions 

wanting to present alternate realties that favored their interests.175 In her book Merchants of 

Doubt, Oreskes chronicles how the NELA model of misinformation has been replicated to spread 

counter-research and doubt about the effects of environmental hazards such as acid rain, the 

ozone hole, secondhand smoke and global warming.176 

In presenting what PRCs like those used by NELA gave them as news, journalists 

believed they were being objective by offering readers multiple perspectives on complex issues, 

fulfilling their role of informing the public. However, political scientist Peter Odegard suggests 

that many journalists in this era worried that the ease and frequency in which they attained copy 

from PRCs was turning them into “little more than intellectual mendicants who go from one 

publicity agent or press bureau to another seeking handouts.”177 What troubled reporters was the 

effect of power exercised by PRCs and the institutions they represented was having on 

journalism, and the subsequent effect journalism was having on society. Linguist John 

Richardson suggests the social effect of journalism is “through its power to shape issue agendas 

and public discourse, it can reinforce beliefs; it can shape people’s opinions not only of the world 

 

174 Oreskes, 2015: 15 
175 Schudson, 1978: 143 
176 Oreskes and Conway, 2011 
177 Odegard, 1930: 132 

 

112 

but also of their place and role in the world; or, if not shape your opinions on a particular matter, 

it can at the very least influence what you have opinions on; in sum, it can help shape social 

reality by shaping our views of social reality.”178 

Contrary to the efforts of public relations council in seeding scientific doubt, however, 

genuine environmental reporting did occur in the 1920s through the 1950s; but it was episodic, 

focused mainly on conservation or working conditions in the nation’s vast industrial complex, 

and was typically found in larger urban newspapers.179 One of the first large-scale environmental 

issues to be extensively covered by the national press was the 1950 controversy over the 

proposed dam at the confluence of the Green and Yuma rivers inside Utah’s Dinosaur National 

Monument (DNM).180 The project was similar to the construction in the 1920s of the Hetch-

Hetchy dam that diverts water from Yosemite National Park to the San Francisco municipal 

water supply and was met with opposition led by preservationist John Muir and his Sierra Club. 

The proposed dam in DNM was to be one of a series of dams constructed in a massive hydro-

electric project to meet rising need for water diversion and electricity in the West. After a 

coalition of conservation groups mounted a well-organized, well-publicized campaign, the final 

draft of the dam project legislation included other proposed dams, except the one inside DNM.181 

Other examples of early environmental reporting come from the St. Louis Dispatch in a 1939 

anti-pollution editorial campaign, and 1947 coverage of a mine disaster. Both won Pulitzer 

Prizes for the newspaper, the 1940 Pulitzer being the first awarded for coverage of an 

environmental issue.182  

 

178 Richardson, 2006: 13 
179 Neuzil, 2008: 145–155 
180 Neuzil, 2008: 145–155 
181 Neuzil, 2008: 145–155 
182 Neuzil, 2008: 177 

 

113 

By today’s standards these are considered environmental issues; however, in the 1920s, 

30s and 40s the concept of the environment, as conceptualized today, was not yet common in  

the public psyche. By the 1960s, however, environmental reporting became common in both 

local and major metropolitan news organizations.183 Papers such as the Chicago Tribune, Los 

Angeles Times, New York Times, Louisville Courier-Journal and Christian Science Monitor led 

the way in adding reporters to cover dedicated environmental beats, and many others followed 

suit. Compared to 10 years prior, news coverage of the environment had risen 300 percent.184 

Some of the reporters covering the environment came from science or health beats, but 

environmental and journalism historian Mark Neuzil suggests one thing they all had in common 

“was the influence of biologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring.”185 The book is well 

documented and authoritatively uses science and data to construct a narrative warning of the 

widespread overuse of pesticides in agriculture. To understand Silent Spring’s influence on not 

just society but a new generation of reporters, one needs to understand the moment Carson was 

writing in and the shift in political discourse that occurred in the years leading up to its release. 

The political shift wasn’t just discursive, it was also cultural and driven by a rapidly growing 

generational gap that fractured the social paradigm. This fracture included a rejection of 

traditional styles of reporting by young journalists, and a challenging of the authority held by one 

generation, by the next. 

 

 

183 Neuzil, 2008: 183 
184 Fox, 1985: 279 
185 Neuzil, 2008: 186 

 

114 

THE POLITICIZATION OF POVERTY AND POLLUTION 

If Silent Spring was a catalyst to a great social awakening to environmental issues, the 

1952 and 1956 U.S. presidential elections were the restless emergence from a deep REM sleep 

that directly preceded it. After Adlai Stevenson’s second loss to Dwight D. Eisenhower, liberal 

intellectuals led by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith and historian Arthur Schlesinger 

Jr. began to reconceptualize the ideology and identity of the Democratic Party.186 The United 

States was in a post-war boom of affluence and prosperity. The country had emerged from  

World War II as a superpower and was battling against the Soviet Union to maintain its 

international economic and political influence. The high capacity for manufacturing needed for 

the production of military supplies continued due to increased post-war consumerism—consumer 

spending was up 60 percent, there was a boom in the population, automobile ownership rose 

steeply and with their increased mobility, families bought new houses in newly developed 

suburbs away from noisy, dirty, congested and neglected city centers.187 But with this affluence 

also came disparity. The migration of mostly white, middle class families to the suburbs 

siphoned vital resources and interest from cities and industrialized areas. The remaining 

population of these areas, consisting mostly of minorities and the poor, were left behind to live 

amongst crumbling infrastructures, crime and pollution.188 This is where Democrats would turn 

their attention, to address social disparity and issues related to the public interest such as the state 

of the environment.  

In an essay called “The Future of Liberalism” in the May 1957 issue of Reporter 

magazine, Schlesinger lays out his argument for a new American liberalism. In the essay he 

 

186 Rome, 2003 
187 Joo, 2009 
188 Joo, 2009 

 

115 

begins to first link the idea of quality of life to the environment, asserting that pollution robs 

Americans of recreation and leisure activities like fishing or boating.189 Schlesinger also draws a 

connection between affluence and disparity, writing:  

“Our gross national product rises; our shops overflow with gadgets and gimmicks; 
consumer goods of ever-increasing ingenuity and luxuriance pour out of our ears. […] 
But our schools become more crowded and dilapidated, our teachers more weary and 
underpaid, our playgrounds more crowded, our cities dirtier, our roads more teeming and 
filthy, our national parks more unkempt, our law enforcement more overworked and 
inadequate.”190 
 

While Schlesinger focused more on social disparity, his co-architect of the new liberal agenda 

appealed to white suburban families living prosperously in the economic boom to be more 

conscious of the broader environment. In one passage from his book The Affluent Society, 

Galbraith paints a scene of a suburban family setting out on what they envisioned as a camping 

trip to a bucolic countryside. Instead of the idealized pastoral escape from suburban life, 

Galbraith describes a dystopian realization of a modern urban-suburban-nonurban ecology of 

landscapes interconnected by the byproducts and unintended consequences of post-war 

consumerism. The family leaves the uniformity of their home situated in a planned community in 

their airconditioned automobile. They travel through a blighted city over crumbling roads lined 

with billboards only to find “the countryside has been rendered largely invisible by commercial 

art.”191 The family then picnics on processed and packaged food along a polluted river before 

making camp with their mattresses and tent made of chemical-leaching materials in a denigrated 

park. Galbraith’s appeal solidified what many had already begun to realize—there is a price to 

progress and mass consumption, and the processes of producing what is consumed has vast 

environmental consequences. Rome writes that “by the time The Affluent Society appeared, many 

 

189 Rome, 2003 
190 Schlesinger, 1956: 8–11 
191 Galbraith, 1958: 253 

 

116 

Americans no longer could take for granted the healthfulness of their milk, because radio-active 

fallout from nuclear testing had contaminated dairy pastures.”192  

 

Schlesinger and Galbraith’s new liberalism began to resonate with the American 

electorate, especially after the 1957 launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union led many to question 

whether U.S. efforts in the Cold War were worth it. The life of abundance afforded by the post-

war boom throughout the 1950s came under question, in particular by the generation just coming 

of age, having not known a life free from the perceived threat of communism.193 Concerned the 

nation was slipping into social malaise, Eisenhower appointed a committee to envision a new set 

of national goals, studies were commissioned by public/private entities to identify “the problems 

and opportunities confronting American democracy” and the New York Times partnered with 

LIFE magazine to run a series of reflections on national purpose.194 Capitalizing on a national 

sense of self-doubt and a “spirited end-of-the-decade debate about the nation’s mission” 

environmental and social issues became key components of the Democratic Party platform over 

the next decade, beginning with the 1960 presidential campaign of Senator John F. Kennedy. 

Published in July of 1960 ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, “The 

Rights of Man” outlined a new Democratic vision for the country and for the first time included 

environmental issues in a national party platform. The document discusses environmental issues 

such as air and water pollution, and a move away from coal and oil to cleaner, renewable sources 

of energy. At the same time, it discusses helping workforces transition into the age of automation 

through education, and a stimulation of economic development to bring new industries to 

chronically depressed areas.  

 

192 Rome, 2003: 529 
193 Rome, 2003: 529 
194 Rome, 2003: 529 

 

117 

General economic measures will not alone solve the problems of localities which suffer 
some special disadvantage. To bring prosperity to these depressed areas and to enable 
them to make their full contribution to the national welfare, especially directed action is 
needed. Areas of heavy and persistent unemployment result from depletion of natural 
resources, technological change, shifting defense requirements, or trade imbalances 
which have caused the decline of major industries. Whole communities, urban and rural, 
have been left stranded in distress and despair, through no fault of their own.195 

 

The policies proposed by Kennedy’s Democratic Party aimed to address many of the issues 

plaguing Appalachian coal communities. Mechanization of the coal industry in the 40s had 

drastically lowered the number of miners it took to clear a coal field; mineral and timber 

resources were extracted with no investment in new industries, leaving thousands of people 

across the Cumberland Plateau out of work.  

The deteriorating socio-economic issues facing Appalachia became a focus of the 

administration of Lyndon B. Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination. In his 1964 State of the 

Union address, Johnson announced a series of social and economic programs aimed at fighting 

poverty and building the “Great Society.” In the speech he said: “Unfortunately many Americans 

live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty. … our task is to help replace their 

despair with opportunity.”196 To launch his Great Society initiative, Johnson went on a series of 

“Poverty Tours” throughout rural Appalachia. Accompanied by Lady Bird Johnson, members of 

the White House communication staff and local and capital press corps, Johnson talked to 

farmers, miners, lumbermen and the region’s vast population of unemployed workers. A pair of 

photographs by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton (Figure 47) and Time magazine 

photographer Walter Bennett (Figure 48) are representative of the visual narrative that emerged 

from the tour. They both show the president casually and affably talking with residents in the  

195 Democratic National Convention Committee on Resolutions and Platform, 1960: 21–22 
196 Johnson, 1964  

 

 

118 

 
Figure 47. President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes the hand of one of the residents of Appalachia as Agent Rufus Youngblood  

(far left) looks on. LBJ Library photo by Cecil Stoughton, 1964. 

 
Figure 48. President Lyndon Johnson’s visit to Tom Fletcher’s home in Kentucky was part of his tour of poverty-stricken  

areas in the U.S. (Photo by Walter Bennett/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images). 1964. 

 

119 

region on their porches of their homes. Johnson’s tours of Kentucky, Tennessee and West 

Virginia were a spectacle, designed to draw attention to the regional problem of poverty in 

Appalachia, while providing the nation a visual of the president being involved, concerned and 

folksy. The tours were widely covered by the media, including The Tennessean. The attention 

Johnson’s poverty tour brought to the region is part of the problem West discussed in “Romantic 

Appalachia.” West writes: 

Each time we are ‘discovered’ a passel of new missionaries invade the mountains. Old 
clothes, surplus food and such are made available and some temporary reforms may 
result—crumbs thrown to the poor who need whole loaves and some meat, too. Some 
stirring is stimulated. Hope Flutters painfully to escape the lint covered mill-hills or dust 
blackened shacks behind slate dumps only to fall broken-winged in polluted air or rivers 
outside. […] As the Nation’s awareness of the ‘new’ discovery wanes and, despairing of 
saving our ‘hillbilly souls’ anyhow, the ‘missionaries’ begin to pullout again. […] Shortly 
we may be forgotten again until another generation ‘discovers’ poverty in Appalachia.197  

West’s discourse illuminates a reality in Appalachia that the result of temporary interest 

 
  

in a problem are solutions that are also temporary. In her documentary Hillbilly, filmmaker 

Ashley York talks with her father, Tim York, and aunts Regina York and Karen Vaughn about 

their experience growing up in the era of Johnson’s Great Society. They discuss the fleeting 

effects government programs had on places like their home, Pike County, Kentucky. York’s 

father and both aunts describe going to school one day and receiving a pair of shoes provided by 

the U.S. government. Regina York recalls: “Just half the gym was full of ugly shoes. That’s what 

the government, I guess, thought we needed. It was interesting to have people coming in to look  

at this area, but it became very evident that it was critical.”198 Vaughn suggests that the biggest 

problem with the temporary attention was perception created by media coverage of the tours. 

“We did sit on the porch, and we went barefoot, it’s just what we did. So, when I see the films, 

 

197 West, 1972b: 2–3 
198 York, 2018 

 

120 

and I see the depictions of the poor Appalachian mountain people it really irritates me because I 

didn’t see us as that.”199  

CONVERGENCE OF CULTURES: YOUNG JOURNALISTS AND A CRITICAL PRESS 

In the 1960s, the traditional thought of journalism as a reflection of society, a reflection 

of culture, was suspended in a moment of convergence when journalism not only reflected 

culture but was a part of that culture.200 The assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin 

Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy had concussed the nation. These events compounded by 

an end to the fear of being critical of the government in the McCarthy era, and growing anti-war, 

civil rights, women’s rights and environmental movements brought upon what journalism 

historian Michael Schudson called “the political and cultural ferment of the 1960s.”201 Schudson 

writes that these events “made criticism seem not only possible but vital. An understandable 

world was coming apart at the ‘seams’—appearances could not be trusted.”202 There came a 

point, that crystalized in the mid-60s, when the an emerging counter culture had reached the limit 

of its tolerance in being manipulated by corporations and the government regarding the effects of 

their activities, in particular relating to environmental issues and the Vietnam War.  

For example, during the 1965 March on Washington to End the Vietnam War, Students 

for a Democratic Society (SDS) President Paul Potter delivered a speech to a crowd of 25,000  

protesters in front of the Washington Monument (Figure 49).In the speech, titled The Incredible 

War, he admonished the Johnson administration’s stronghanded efforts of managing the press. 

Potter said: “What in fact has the war done for freedom in America? It has led to even more  

 

199 York, 2018 
200 Schudson, 1978 
201 Schudson, 1978: 177 
202 Schudson, 1978: 177 

 

121 

 

Figure 49. Thousands attend a rally on the grounds of the Washington Monument in Washington on April 17, 1965, to hear 
Ernest Gruening, a Democratic senator from Alaska, and other speakers discuss U.S. policy in Vietnam. The rally followed 

picketing of the White House by students demanding an end to Vietnam fighting. Charles Tasnadi/AP 

 
vigorous governmental efforts to control information, manipulate the press and pressure and 

persuade the public through distorted or downright dishonest documents such as the White Paper 

on Vietnam.”203 Press management was a technique developed by PRCs to control the narrative 

of news that was not supplied by them. One tactic, for example, was if an event, initiative or 

campaign were a success, the announcement was held at a place of power such as the White 

House, or at a company’s corporate headquarters. Failures, on the other hand, were often 

discussed at the site of the failure, which was intended to place distance between the event and 

203 Potter, 1965 

 

 

122 

those responsible.204 Critical of the way the media has historically allowed itself to be controlled 

in this manner, Richardson writes: 

“The work of mainstream journalists mediates the relationship between ruling class 
ideology and news content and supports the hegemony by naturalizing, or taking for 
granted, the inequalities of contemporary capitalism. […] Journalists have internalized 
commonsensical notions of who ought to be treated as authoritative, accept the frames 
imposed on events by officials and marginalize the delegitimate voices that fall outside 
the dominant elite circles.”205 
 

Within society’s defiance of the ‘dominance of elite circles’ a new generation of journalists had 

reached the limits of their willingness to participate in the support of traditional capitalistic 

hegemonic structures of power that journalism perpetuated since the rise of industrialism in the 

1870s. Following the lyrical narratives emerging from counterculture led in part by writers like  

Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, young journalists wanted to focus more on the 

crafting of story rather than the straight reporting of news. Like the rest of their generation, 

young journalists were skeptical of “official accounts of public affairs” and pushed journalism 

toward a more active and participatory practice.206 Rather than passively reporting on the PRCs 

crafted narrative, the 1960s saw some young journalists, and editors like John Siegenthaler, as 

advocates, taking on a variety of social and environmental issues.  

 

The new adversarial relationship between journalists and the elite can easily be illustrated 

by The Tennessean’s coverage of mining in the 1960s and 70s. Corn and reporters Bill 

Greenburg and Keel Hunt, took on coal companies, state regulators and the Tennessee Valley  

Authority (TVA) over the devastation being caused by a lack of oversight and enforcement in the 

practice of strip-mining and mountain top removal. One of Corn’s photographs, (Figure 50), 

titled “Truck on strip mine ruins” shows a cluster of barren trees jutting up from a man-made  

 

204 Schudson, 1978: 170 
205 Richardson, 2006: 36 
206 Schudson, 1978: 162–163 

 

123 

 

Figure 50. Abandoned truck on strip mine ruins on king mt in Clarified, TN. Jack Corn, 1969. 

 

 
butte on top of King Mountain near Clairfield, Tennessee. From a line of dark black soil loosely 

binding the trees to what remains of the earth beneath them, a shear limestone cliff plunges into a 

trench filled with rubble that curves around the mountains contour. The overcast sky illuminates 

the diminutive silhouette of a dump truck, often called an “earth mover,” parked atop a ridge far 

in the distance. With this picture, Corn said he wanted to show the scale of the devastation 

occurring.207 Mining machines are large in their own right, but through Corn’s use of forced 

perspective, the one in the photograph is reduced to a toy-like stature when compared to the size 

of the destruction it created. Through informal balance, Corn is able to show imbalanced power 

in Appalachia. The imbalance in power comes from both the relatively small machines that were 

207 Corn, 2019 

 

 

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able to destroy mountains, and metaphorically of the coal companies imposing their will on the 

valley from far away. In a chapter titled “The Rape of the Appalachians,” Caudill writes of 

mining machines, “these marvelous new tools enabled men to change the earth, abolishing its 

natural features and reshaping them as whim or necessity might require.”208 Corn had been a 

reconnaissance photographer in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War and once again took 

to the skies with a camera, this time documenting the devastation caused by progress instead of 

war. “I could see and photograph the widespread damage,” he said of a series of aerial 

photographs of surface mines around Campbell County in eastern Tennessee (Figure 51) and 

(Figure 52). “I think the photographs are important historical documents about our land use.”209 

Corn’s use of a high perspective in these aerial photographs gives the viewer a novel view of 

what many in the valley witness every day at ground level. While showing the true extent of the 

devastation, elevation and leading lines abstract the destruction creating a striking juxtaposition 

between contours, light and shadow. Shot nearly straight down, Corn uses a flattened perspective 

to spatially orient the viewer in the first photograph titled “Land slide down to road and R.R. 

below, Campbell Co., TN.” Corn shows the wounded mountain by using a thick curving band of 

exposed rock to move the viewer across the frame. Moving from left to right, two thick bands cut 

through the forest canopy, catching the eye and leading it down to the parallel railroad tracks in 

the foreground. Corn’s use of lines here gives the photograph movement and allows the viewer 

to imagine how debris from blasting would flow down the mountainside. Corn was encouraged  

by his editors at The Tennessean to illustrate this type of destruction of the Cumberland 

mountains.  

 

208 Caudill, 1962: 306 
209 Corn, 2000 

 

125 

Figure 51. Land slide down to road and R.R. below, Campbell Co., TN. Jack Corn, 1969. 

 

 

 

126 

Figure 52. Aerial of strip-mined mountain in Campbell Co., TN. Jack Corn, 1969. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Newsgathering and news values at The Tennessean newspaper were shaped by activist 

editor John Seigenthaler, who encouraged Corn and reporters to examine issues related to mining 

in northeast Tennessee. Seigenthaler’s 2014 obituary in the New York Times highlights his 

extraordinary career as a journalist and activist.210 Prior to being hired as the editor of The 

Tennessean in 1962, Seigenthaler was a senior advisor to then-U.S. Attorney General Robert F. 

Kennedy, and worked on John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign before joining the 

Department of Justice. He was a civil rights activist, and heavily involved with the freedom 

rides, acting as chief negotiator between the Department of Justice and Alabama Governor John  

Patterson. He is even said to have launched the political career of former U.S. Vice President Al 

Gore. Gore was a reporter at The Tennessean in the 1970s, and Seigenthaler encouraged him to 

run for a congressional seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Representative Joe L. Evins.211 

Seigenthaler’s politics and advocacy for social change shaped not only his identity, but 

his perception of the role of journalism in society—for him there was no boundary between 

activism and journalism. Working as a reporter in 1954, he was dispatched to the Shelby Avenue  

Bridge in Nashville to cover a man threating to jump into the Cumberland River below. After 

interviewing Gene Bradford Williams, Seigenthaler grabbed and held him from jumping until the 

police arrived.212 In 2014, shortly before his death, that bridge was renamed the John 

Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge. During his time as editor of The Tennessean, Seigenthaler 

mentored a number of young reporters who would have long and celebrated careers such as 

David Halberstam, Bill Kovach, Jim Squires and Nat Caldwell. Corn recalls working with all 

these reporters and the culture Seigenthaler cultivated in the newsroom of The Tennessean. Corn 

 

210 Schwartz, 2014 
211 Schwartz, 2014 
212 Cass, 2014 

 

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said they would sit around and discuss current social issues and what they could do about them. 

“We young journalists believed, and perhaps we were naïve, that we could change society and 

right the injustices that many in America accepted.”213  

In addition to setting the agenda for The Tennessean, Seigenthaler also influenced 

discourse through his involvement in several community organizations. He was heavily involved 

with community development and advocacy work being done by the Archdioceses of Nashville. 

Serving on the board of directors of the Archdioceses’ Department of Rural Development, 

Seigenthaler oversaw parish and community outreach efforts in rural Appalachian communities 

in northeast Tennessee including the Clear Fork Valley, which perhaps contributed to his 

encouragement of coverage of the depressed area despite it being out of the paper’s normal 

coverage radius. Corn recalls his first trip to an area of Appalachia known as the Cumberland 

Plateau. In 1956, he accompanied reporter David Halberstam to Monroe in Fentress County, 

approximately 100-miles northeast of Nashville. Through his reporting, Halberstam had been 

trying to free a teenage boy, Charles Reagan, who had been held without charge for six months 

in a Nashville jail. After his release, Corn and Halberstam were instructed by the city editor to 

drive the boy home and do a story on his reunion with his parents.214 This encounter, like 

Seigenthaler intervening on the bridge, blurs the distinction between being a witness to and being 

a participant in the events before them. The journalists in both of these cases were intervening in 

events they were covering, thus in a way controlling what they were also observing. As an 

exercise of power, this resembles Foucault’s notion of panopticism. The panopticon is Foucault’s 

imagining of a structure where few can exert power and control over many by conditioning them 

213 Corn, 2000 
214 Corn, 2000 

 

 

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to think they are constantly being watched.215 The journalists at The Tennessean identifying 

themselves as being agents of social change helps to understand how they perceived their role as 

being both a member of society and a changer of it. In the case of Corn, Halberstam, Caldwell 

and Kovach they were using journalism as an act upon society, in which they worked to change 

society. In this case, we see the work of the journalist occupy a place of idealism working against 

hegemonic norms of Appalachian socio-economic class systems. “Journalistic discourse, in 

particular, is one active element in bringing about such change through shaping understandings, 

influencing audience attitudes and beliefs (particularly through their reinforcement), and 

transforming the consciousness of those who read and consume it.”216 The way that Seigenthaler 

and the staff at The Tennessean perceived their role as journalists shifted what the journalistic 

discourse they produced does from informing society to making an argument to society that it 

needed to change.  

FUELING THE COLD WAR: LABOR, COAL AND COMMUNISM IN THE AGE OF 
ACTIVISM  

A hallmark of the NELA campaign was installation of the logic that consumption of 

electricity was quintessentially “American” into the national conscience. It follows in that logic 

that the more consumption, the better, and anything that challenged either the supply or 

consumption of electricity was not only anti-capitalist, but Anti-American. Pro-capitalist U.S. 

discourse in the 20th century, in particular during the Cold War, adopted as its foundation the 

same principal logic. Economist L.C. Michelon argued in the 1960s that to be American one 

must be free and capitalistic, the two principles being inseparable.217 In addition to his work 

 

215 Foucault, 1977 
216 Richardson, 2006: 29 
217 Michelon, 1962: 8 

 

130 

teaching at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Purdue University and directing the Industrial 

Relations Center at the University of Chicago, Michelon contributed to anti-communist 

discourse. He authored a pamphlet titled “Communism: What it means. How it works”, which 

was part of a propaganda campaign aimed at the U.S. labor force. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, 

Michelon, along with other leading economic and civic scholars, produced works for a pamphlet 

series called “Building Economic Understanding” by the Good Reading Rack Service division of 

Koster-Dana, a New York-based publishing corporation. The series included other titles such as 

“Our Red Rivals: A penetrating report on why the Soviet people feel they will catch America” 

and “The Communist Conspiracy: How you can fight it” which were widely distributed to the 

work force of major U.S. companies such as General Motors, for example. In “The Communist 

Conspiracy” writer and anti-Communist community organizer Carol Saunders lays out a series of 

actions individual workers can take in contributing to the fight against the global spread of 

Communism. Although overtly anti-Communist, her discourse is also a vailed criticism of social 

movements emerging at the time to advance civil rights and environmental protections and to 

protest U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia.  

A section titled “Your Civic Responsibilities,” for example, is as much anti-labor and 

anti-regulatory discourse aimed to quell worker support for efforts to strengthen U.S. 

environmental and worker safety policy as it is a warning against the spread of socialistic 

ideology. Saunders writes: “The alert citizen will look closely at those who lay the blame for all 

ills at the feet of the ‘capitalists’ and seek to subtly change our form of government by placing 

more and more control over our economic life, thus violating the intents and purpose of our 

Constitution.”218 In addition to being “alert,” which implies a constant watchfulness, Saunders 

218 Saunders, 1961: 14 

 

 

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urges workers to “not be fooled” and to “know the enemy” to “know our government” and the 

“roots of our heritage” as well as to inoculate their children against subversion. Perhaps most 

telling of the dualism of her discourse comes in the section titled “Safeguard Your Job,” in which 

she implores the worker to not be disgruntled, regardless of hardship or injustice encountered in 

the workplace, because they enjoy the freedom of being employed. Any fight against that 

freedom, against the corporation, aids the communists in their global economic warfare. The 

more urgent, fervent and emboldened Saunders’ discourse becomes, the more it begins to 

resemble the fundamental principles of the ideology she aimed to fight. She discusses at length 

the individual contributions that workers need to make to meet the greater goal, a need to trust 

the government to provide answers and solutions to advance the fight, and the need for workers 

to inform others of what they know and have learned through the sharing of information.219 It is 

this last action prescribed in Saunders’ discourse—the alert and watchful act of information 

sharing — that was perhaps most fundamental in Rogovin’s move toward becoming a 

documentary photographer.  

Rogovin said his social conscience began to evolve during the Great Depression, when he 

became involved with the Optical Workers Union.220 He began attending meetings and classes 

centered on discussions of the political economy. These discussions were held at a neighbor’s 

house and run by the Workers’ School, a division of the Communist Party. Bothered by mass 

unemployment of the working class and the sight of breadlines and growing poverty, Rogovin 

writes that the meetings and classes “convinced me that Socialism was the path we should take to 

create a more equitable society.”221 He himself held a prominent position in a Manhattan practice 

 

219 Saunders, 1961: 8 
220 Rogovin, 1997 
221 Rogovin, 1997: 12 

 

132 

that served a more affluent clientele, but he helped other workers organize in less well-off 

practices across the city, and picketed with them when a strike was called. During one 1938 

strike at an optometry shop on 23rd street, Rogovin was accused of harassing a customer and 

charged with assault. After being convicted, but given a suspended sentence, he decided to leave 

Manhattan and got a job with a practice in Buffalo, New York. Despite the move, he maintained 

close ties with the Optical Workers Union in Manhattan and helped union officials meet optical 

workers in Buffalo. When the practice where Rogovin worked tried to organize, he led the 

negotiating efforts. The attempt to unionize failed and the workers went on strike; seen as the 

instigator, Rogovin was fired. He decided to open his own practice and geared that practice to 

primarily serve union members in Buffalo. The close contact with beleaguered steel, auto and 

dock workers emboldened his beliefs that many of the working class had been forgotten and lost 

between the industrial cogs of capitalism. He bought a camera and began documenting the 

downtrodden lives of the workers in the neighborhood around his practice in Buffalo’s south 

side. 

Perhaps in contrast to Rogovin’s socialistic ideology was the duty he felt to serve in the 

nation’s war efforts. In 1942, the same year he married Anne Snetsky, Rogovin joined the U.S. 

Army. He worked in a medical unit stationed at an allied hospital in the English village of 

Cirencester. In materials he gathered for an unpublished autobiography, Rogovin recalls being 

struck by seeing “the abuse of land alongside the railroad tracks” in the English country as he 

traveled by train from Liverpool to Cirencester.222 His comment on the abuse of land he 

witnessed in England foreshadows what would be a theme in his early work in West Virginia—

the degradation of land and community in the name of economic progress. This abuse, along 

222 Rogovin, 1997: 20 

 

 

133 

with the poverty and neglect of the workforce he served back in Buffalo, strengthened his 

socialistic views. It was these “radical” political views, Rogovin argues, that prevented him from 

being promoted from corporal to sergeant for more than a year.223 After being discharged from 

the U.S. Army in 1945, Rogovin returned to his optometry practice which had been run by his 

brother Sam in his absence. Back in Buffalo, Rogovin resumed his interest in photography, 

continuing to make portraits of workers around Buffalo.  

In 1953 he traveled to Mexico to work on what would become Rogovin’s first 

photographic series, “Early Mexico.” Traveling with Anne, Rogovin made photographs in 

Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and the Yucatan between 1953–1961. Rogovin considers one 

photograph from this series, “The Iguana Seller,” (Figure 53) to be his first serious success in 

documentary photography.224,225 The image made at a market outside the Mayan ruins at Tulum, 

shows a woman with her arms crossed, leaning forward over an assortment of dead black 

iguanas. The cinta, a traditional Mayan hair ribbon, wrapped around her head appears worn and 

tattered. Her eyes are deep and engaging, which makes her face welcoming, despite her 

seemingly stoic expression. The photograph is well-proportioned in its composition. Rogovin 

centered the woman in the frame, placing her piercing eyes along the top third of the frame, and 

her folded forearms along the bottom third, creating a pleasing sense of informal balance. He 

also has the woman leaning in toward the viewer, which creates intimacy between the subject 

and viewer. The photograph is early evidence of the mastery of human compassion and 

photographic composition Rogovin would come to possess.  

 

 

223 Rogovin, 1997: 20 
224 Rogovin, 1997: 21 
225 The Rogovin Collection, 2002 

 

134 

Figure 53. “Iguana Seller,” from the series, “Early Mexico.” Milton Rogovin, 1953–1961. 

 

 

 

 

 

135 

 In addition to resuming his interest in photography after his Army discharge, Rogovin 

also resumed his interest in politics. As the U.S. Cold War intensified, he and Anne increased 

their socialist activism. The Rogovins’ activism included raising money for the legal defense of 

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were tried, convicted and executed as accused Soviet spies.226 

Their protest of the Rosenberg trial followed the photography trips to Mexico, and Milton’s 

continued involvement with labor and social reform groups received the attention of the House 

Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). In 1957, Milton and Anne were issued 

subpoenas to testify before the committee. Newspaper coverage of the testimony in the local 

press (Figure 54) highlighted his refusal to answer the committee’s questions and suggests that 

he was the top communist in Buffalo, even that he played a part in a failed plot to assassinate 

President Harry Truman.227 Rogovin said the investigation and media coverage had profound and  

devastating effects on their family, community and on his optometry practice. He writes: 

“Children on our street were warned against playing with ‘the Rogovin children,’ People who 

know us well were afraid to greet us openly on the street […] Our patients were afraid to come to  

our office, for fear they too might be accused of being ‘reds.’”228 Rogovin also said that after 

their testimony, neighbors kept a watchful eye on them. One neighbor in particular, Rogovin 

writes, “would go out and copy the visitor’s license plate number,” anytime anyone came to their 

house.229 Inoculation of the children in the neighborhood against the enemy and the neighbors 

fulfilling their civic duty by keeping a watchful eye placed the Rogovins as the target of the 

actions prescribed for in anti-Communist propaganda like Saunders’ “The Communist 

Conspiracy: How you can fight it.” The attention Rogovin received from his HUAC appearance  

 

226 The Rogovin Collection, 2002 
227 Buffalo Evening News, Friday, October 4, 1957 
228 Rogovin, 1997: 25 
229 Rogovin, 1997: 25 

 

136 

Figure 54. Buffalo Evening News, Friday, October 4, 1957. 

 

 

137 

and the effect it had on the optometrist practice forced him to make a pivotal decision. He took a 

step back from optometry to focus more of his time on photography, leaving management of the 

practice to his brother Sam as he did while serving in the Army. Milton and Anne made more 

trips to Mexico, and he began work on his celebrated “Storefront Churches Series” on Buffalo’s 

eastside. In 1970, the Rogovins’ practice moved to a small office and hours were cut when Sam 

retired; eight years later the practice closed completely, as Milton retired to focus all of his 

attention on his documentary work.230  

While the Rogovins were fighting for worker equality, social justice in Buffalo, and an 

end to the Vietnam War, social movements in the coal communities of Appalachia were also on 

the rise. Led by activists like West, folk singer Pete Seeger, labor organizer Mother Jones and 

clergy and community leaders, unorganized yet related efforts were being mounted all over the 

region to improve the social, economic and public health conditions in the Appalachian coal 

fields. One such effort was led by the Coal Commission of the Communist Party, U.S.A. 

(CCCP). To counter anti-communist propaganda like the pamphlet series produced by the Good 

Reading Rack Service, the CCCP produced its own literature to argue for what it saw as the 

liberation of the American worker from corporate slavery. The centerpiece of the CCCP’s 

campaign was a call to end exploitive land leases in Appalachia and a shift to public ownership 

of coal mining operations and other basic industries such as railroads and utilities.231 This circles 

back to Pinchot’s early interest in the idea of public utilities through his commissioning of the 

Giant Power study in Pennsylvania. A 1970 CCCP publication titled “DIG WE MUST! – INTO 

THE COAL OPERATORS PROFITS,” (Figure 55) highlights the push by CCCPs for a public 

takeover of coal, and the party’s fighting for broader worker issues such as drastic reform within  

230 The Rogovin Collection, 2002 
231 Coal Commission of the Communist Party, U.S.A., 1970: 13 

 

 

138 

Figure 55. Brochure Cover, “Dig We Must!–Into the Coal Operators’ Profits!”  

Coal Commission of the Communist Party, U.S.A., 1970. 

 

 

 

139 

the labor unions representing miners and utility workers. Beginning in the 1940s a belief 

emerged that unions had been infiltrated and corrupted by the coal companies who were accused 

of providing payouts to top union officials in exchange for favorable contract terms and to end 

strikes.232 The May 1974 issue of United Mine Workers Journal—a monthly magazine produced 

for members the United Mineworkers of America (U.M.W.)—illustrates the CCCPs assertion of 

union corruption.  

The issue’s cover (Figure 56) features a photograph showing a group of men holding 

documents while huddled around a picnic table—the headline reads “The Bribe at Brookside: 

The Story of a Desperate Plot to Break the Duke Power Strike.” The cover story is about a sting 

operation undertaken by the U.M.W. to catch officials at Duke Power and the Southern Labor 

Union (S.L.U.) bribing picket line leaders to end a strike at Duke Power’s Brookside coal mine.  

The photograph is of a meeting between S.L.U. president Paul Byrge and field man Noah Harris 

and strike leaders Carl Noe and Ronnie Curtis held at an airstrip in Harland, Kentucky. The 

article details how Noe and Curtis documented the attempted bribe by tape recording the meeting 

while United Mine Workers Journal photographer Earl Dotter hid in nearby bushes 

photographing the transaction. The journal’s sting led to the filing of 14 corruption charges 

against Duke Energy officials and leadership of the S.L.U. and illustrated the power and 

influence of money the coal companies exercised over their workers and unions charged with 

representing the workers interests. 

Rogovin said he and Anne read a lot in the news about the corruption and poverty miners 

in Appalachia had been struggling with for years and decided to see it for themselves. Working 

less at the optometry practice allowed them, in the summer of 1962, to pack up their small Volvo  

232 Coal Commission of the Communist Party, U.S.A., 1970 

 

 

140 

Figure 56. Magazine Cover, “United Mine Workers Journal.” United Mineworkers of America, May 1974. 

 

 

 

141 

van with sleeping bags and camera equipment and drive down to Beckley, West Virginia.233 In 

addition to the photographs he made, Rogovin recorded what he witnessed in Appalachia with 

sketches and poetry. One 6 x 9 inch spiral bound stenographer’s notebook, with the label 

“vacation in W. Va.—July, 1962” handwritten on the cover, is filled with notes and drawings of 

the region. The drawings do not directly correspond to any one photograph he made. This 

suggests they are not early studies of specific scenes. They are more conceptual as if Rogovin 

was working through his first impressions, using the sketches as notes in constructing the 

thematic representation he wanted in his photographs. A pair of sketches depict the finite nature 

of coal and what happens when the coal runs out in a community built around its production. The 

first sketch (Figure 57) shows an earth mover beneath a tipple, receiving a load of processed coal 

for transport. Beneath the drawing, Rogovin writes: “Probably another year’s work—and it’ll  

fold up.” The next sketch (Figure 58) shows a road, with a cluster of houses at the end with the 

name “Raleigh,” which is the county were Beckley, West Virginia is located. Below the drawing 

is a quote from a local miner: “Naw—I didn’t want to be a miner if I can help it. This used to be 

a nice town once when the mines was goin.” Another pair of drawings, one from the same 

notebook and another from a later trip, further illustrate the deterioration of community once coal 

companies shutter their deep mining operations. A sketch (Figure 59) labeled “Gary,”—an 

isolated town 45 miles south of Beckley near the northern border of Virginia—depicts what 

appears to be a crane stretching across a road with some trees in the background. Below it 

Rogovin writes: “They’re tearin’ down the houses there.” Destruction of community is also 

represented in a 1969 sketch (Figure 60) showing a church with a for sale sign posted outside.  

 

233 Rogovin, 1997: 42 

 

 

142 

Figure 57. Coal Tipple Sketch, 6 x 9 inches. Milton Rogovin, West Virginia, 1962. 

 

 

 

 

143 

Figure 58. Neighborhood Sketch, 6 x 9 inches. Milton Rogovin, Raleigh County, West Virginia, 1962. 

 

 

 

144 

Figure 59. Building Demolition Sketch, 6 x 9 inches. Milton Rogovin, Gary, West Virginia, 1962. 

 

 
 

 

145 

Figure 60. Church For Sale Sketch, 5 x 8 inches. Milton Rogovin, West Virginia, 1969. 

 

 

 

146 

Driving down State Road 90 at the north end of the Clear Fork Valley, Cirillo explained that it’s 

not uncommon in coal country for churches founded in one community to end up in another.234 

As deep mines closed and company towns were abandoned, the houses, churches, stores and 

other structures were often either demolished, or sold to be dismantled and relocated, so that the 

little coal that might be located under them could be surface mined. This explains, for example, 

how the First Baptist Church of Pruden, Tennessee, is now located in Pineville, Kentucky.235 

“THEY LOOKED ONLY TO GOD TO GIVE THEM IN THE NEXT WORLD ALL THAT 
WAS YEARNED FOR IN THIS ONE”: APPALACHIAN RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE 
1960S AND 70S 

Believing a variation of what West, the CCCP, and others were arguing in West 

Virginia—that a decolonial self-determination was the only hope for cultural and economic 

salvation—in 1965 a small group of visionaries set out to transform Clear Fork from being the 

Valley of Despair to being the Model Valley in a revitalized Appalachia. Led by Clairfield  

postmistress Louise Adams and Cirillo, the group calling itself the Appalachia Development 

Institute (ADI) conceived a simple but ambitious plan: free the valley from the shackles of the  

coal industry by cultivating the resources and workforce available after the coal jobs had gone. 

The group prepared and produced, among other materials, a twenty-page report assessing the 

challenges facing the valley, establishing a scope for the project, detailing an outline for 

initiatives and providing resident testimonials of the underlying reality of Appalachia. The 

report, which included elements of graphical branding—logos and graphical abstract 

representations of geographic locations (Figure 61)—was sent to funding and community 

advocacy groups in the region and across the state of Tennessee. Adams suggests that so much  

 

234 Cirillo, 2019 
235 Cirillo, 2019 

 

147 

 

 

Figure 61. Branding Elements from Model Valley reports and proposal. Appalachia Development Institute, 1969. 

          

148 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

attention and resources were being devoted to urban areas and making a model city, why 

couldn’t a similar approach be taken in developing a model valley? As detailed in the report, the 

Model Valley project called for the establishment of several separate but interconnected entities 

serving specific functions to address what ADI saw as the key issues facing the Clear Fork – 

health, economy, infrastructure and culture were the top priorities.    

The project title “Model Valley” was conceived by Adams as a discursive response to a 

1964 article titled “A Valley of Despair: The Rural Face of Poverty” that was published in The 

Tennessean. The article, by Bill Kovach, took up half of the front page of the Sunday B section  

and was accompanied by three Corn photographs (Figure 62). The article chronicles the 

challenges out-of-work miners and their families faced from a lack of access to medical services 

and poor educational resources and facilities. Cirillo writes in the Model Valley Report: “Not 

unlike many other Appalachian mountain communities, our Tennessee and Kentucky valley of 

despair, has been victimized since 1945 by industrialization, post-war cutbacks, and the failure of 

the Unions to adapt to real situations.” Corn’s photographs accompanying the article capture this 

struggle. One photograph titled “Buffalo School, kids at pump, Clairfield” (Figure 63), shows a 

group of children in a mud-filled play-yard, sharing a tin cup to drink from a pump well at 

recess. Corn uses depth of field to create complexity in the image with the three students at the 

well and their classmates running about behind them all being in focus. Corn’s understanding of 

geometry is at play, creating motion at the well. The tilted head of the girl on the left brings the 

viewer to her downward positioned arm. From there, the eye moves up the handle, down the 

water pump, to the spout, into the cup, then back up the arm of the girl on the right.  

In addition to showing the condition of the school, seen in the background, the 

photograph connects to a broader issue in the valley—water. Runoff caused by blasting  

 

149 

Figure 62. The Tennessean, Section B “Today’s World” cover. Feb. 2, 1964. 

 

 

150 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 63. “Buffalo School, kids at pump, Clairfield,” Jack Corn, 1961. 

 

151 

associated with surface mining left the rivers and streams in the Clear Fork polluted. Corn’s 

previously discussed photograph, “Stripmine landslide” (Figure 64) illustrates the path debris 

from blasting overburden takes down the mountain sides to whatever lies below. Overburden is a 

term used by the coal industry to describe the material that sits on top of a seam of coal that must 

be removed in order to extract the resource. In some cases, there is nothing below, but often there 

are streams, homes, or farmland. Corn’s photograph “Huddleston farm with strip mine 

overburden” (Figure 65) shows field’s that were destroyed, contaminated, and rendered 

untillable by blasting debris. Similar to his photograph “Truck on strip mine ruins,” Corn uses 

informal balance to illustrate power. He placed a mound of removed overburden in the 

foreground to exaggerate its size. Here the viewer sees the tracks of an earth mover appearing 

larger than the furrows in the Huddleston’s field below, larger than their horse, and larger than 

their house off in the distance. The mound itself dwarfs everything else in the photograph, even 

the mountain in the background, as if to signify that the coal was more important than anything 

else. Instead of calling the rocks and soil mountains, as they are, they are called overburden to 

portray them as being an obstacle “over” the precious coal that is burdensome to remove.  

Coal company discourse underscores how such devastation can be justified. One industry 

publication titled “The Greening of West Virginia” describes coal as an “energy crop” and 

oversimplifies the process and impact of its removal by likening it to a “harvest.” A graphic 

(Figure 66) illustrates the process in simple terms. The graphic shows a cross-section of a surface 

mine and includes only three labels: “hillside,” “slope” and “coal seam.” Between the large 

mound labeled hillside and smaller mound labeled slope, an excavator is seen scooping up coal 

from an exposed seam. This same graphic, with a few additional labels (Figure 67), is also found  

 

 

152 

Figure 64. “Stripmine landslide,” Jack Corn, 1969. 

 

 

 

153 

Figure 65. “Huddleston farm with strip mine overburden,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

154 

 

 

Figure 66. Strip Mining Graphic from “The Greening of West Virginia.” 

West Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Association. 

 

 

 

Figure 67. Strip Mining Graphic from “Energy and the Environment: What’s The Strip Mine Controversy About?”  

Surface Mining Research Mining Library in Charleston, West Virginia. 

  

155 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in a publication titled “Energy and The Environment” produced by the Surface Mining Research 

Mining Library in Charleston, West Virginia. What the graphic shows is a process known as  

mountain top removal; what it doesn’t show is how the trench between the hillside and slope was 

created by explosion to expose the coal seam below.  

 Pollution of rivers, streams and creeks by overburden seeped into groundwater and left 

wells, like one in Corn’s photograph the children were drinking from, vulnerable to 

contamination. Wells were also at risk of contamination from the widespread practice of bootleg 

mining. Charles Higginbotham, director of the Clear Fork Utility District (CFUD), recalls an  

incident in the 1960s when his neighbor Fred Hanes denied a group of miners access to the coal 

beneath his property. Higginbotham said the next day Hanes went out to draw some water and 

heard the miners down his well stealing the coal.236 Setting up the CFUD was a hard-fought 

battle that took more than a decade. The district was established by the Model Valley Economic 

Development Corporation (MVEDC), one of the initiatives of Adams and Cirillo’s ADI. 

Standing in the understated, beige-painted cinderblock lobby of the MVEDC, Executive Director 

Mary Jo Leygraaf said that access to water and other basic services were vital to the development 

of the valley.237 Seeing the degraded status of the community’s drinking water, solely drawn 

from individual wells, the MVEDC began in the late 1960s advocating for extension of the 

municipal water system that ended in White Oak further up the valley. Leygraaf said funding the 

project was an issue, and it would take until 1983 for CFUD to be able to offer municipal water 

to the residents of Clear Fork.238  

 

236 Higginbotham, 2019 
237 Leygraaf, 2019 
238 Leygraaf, 2019 

 

156 

In addition to finding sustainable sources of funding, one of the biggest obstacles Adams, 

Cirillo and the ADI faced in realizing their Model Valley was land and accessing the resources 

found. In 1972 the ADI and MVEDC opened a pallet factory on a plot of land behind the 

MVEDC office in Clairfield; Corn covered the dedication for The Tennessean (Figure 68). The 

factory employed 18 workers and was the first new industry in the valley since the deep mines 

began to close in the 1960s.239 Wood to construct the shipping pallets came from timber on the 

MVEDC property around the factory. When all the usable hardwood on the property had been 

harvested, the factory began struggling to find raw material necessary for operation. Coal 

companies held leases on the majority of land in the valley and were waiting for the coal to run 

out to begin harvesting the timber. The timber that was felled was used to support coal 

operations, so they refused to sell hardwood to the MVEDC.240 Despite initial success, the 

factory closed after a few years in operation.241 The coal companies refused to sell timber to the 

MVEDC, knowing it would suffocate the efforts of locals to build non-coal related enterprises in 

the valley. Reliance on coal is what gave the coal industry its power, and the pallet factory 

threatened the reliance the people of the Clear Fork Valley had on coal for prosperity.  

Power uses discourse and photography to underscore and promote its interest.242 One way 

of gaining knowledge from photographs is to understand who is using the photograph and 

how.243 Foucault’s perspective of power however, posits that institutional power can be disrupted 

through the wielding of power by other actors at given periods of time. Foucault conceived that 

rather than being rigidly structural in a top-down hierarchy, power is more fluid and circulates  

 

239 Appalachia, 1972 
240 Cirillo, 2019 
241 Leygraaf, 2019 
242 Richardson, 2006 
243 Tagg, 2009 

 

157 

Figure 68. “Clairfield pallet factory dedication,” Jack Corn, 1972. 

Figure 69. Untitled, from Appalachia Series, Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. 

 

 

 

158 

 

 

among multiple spheres and “permeates all levels of social existence.”244 Through their 

photography, both Corn and Rogovin fought against the exercise of institutional power aimed at 

keeping Appalachia reliant on coal. Rogovin’s portraits shatter the illusion that miners were 

defined by the work they did. Though he photographed them at work, he challenged the sooty 

aesthetic enlisted by photographers before him by not always showing the miners as being dirty. 

For example, his photograph of three female miners (Figure 69) shows them wearing unstained 

work clothes, and their faces free of coal soot. From their hardhats, carbide lanterns and 

aluminum lunch pails it is clear that they are miners; however, Rogovin has freed them from the 

dark and gritty masks that would conceal their identity. Rogovin is making a statement that the 

workers are not an anonymous commodity—not chattel in the massive industrial workings of the 

coal industry. His photographs fight against the structure that places the miners’ lives completely 

under company control, giving them agency and individuality. Similarly, Corn celebrated the 

spirit of the people he photographed while bringing attention to issues and obstacles they 

experienced in trying to once again become self-reliant. He highlighted their success in 

launching new enterprises, and their frustration that the geography of their valley home not only 

physically isolated them from the rest of the Claiborne County, but also sequestered them from 

an equitable allocation of government resources. 

 

 

 

 

 

244 Wetherell, Taylor and Yates, 2010: 77 

 

 

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“They are fine photographs of a mature and serious artist, working in the great American 

tradition of Lewis Hine, Jacob Riis, and continued in the FSA photographs of Walker Evans, 

Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn and others.” 

— Paul Strand, 1966 

 
 
 

 

INSPIRING A VIEW OF APPALACHIA: GREAT DEPRESSION ERA  

PHOTOGRAPHY FROM WALKER EVANS TO RUSSELL LEE 

CHAPTER 5 

 

Penned in a letter of support for Rogovin’s fellowship application to the John Simon 

Guggenheim Foundation, the above praise reveals the deep appreciation photographer Paul 

Strand came to hold for Rogovin’s work. Strand was among a cohort of photographers including 

Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston who helped establish photography as a serious American art 

form in the 20th century. He is celebrated for his commanding vision which borrowed from 

traditional studies of form and light used by painters and sculptors that he skillfully applied to the 

photographic medium.245 Strand mentored Rogovin when he was beginning to hone his practice 

of photography in the 1960s, and as their friendship grew, so did their respect for one another’s 

work and approach to social documentary.  

Like Rogovin, Corn also looked to a master of the medium to guide him as a young 

photographer, developing a lifelong friendship with photographer Russell Lee. Lee, best known 

for his work with the Farm Security Administration, took an ethnographic approach to exploring 

issues of class culture in American society. Through discussion of their personal influences along 

with their photographs, this chapter explores the social and personal factors, including the work 

of other photographers, that shaped Corn’s and Rogovin’s Appalachia work. While their work is 

connected by topic, time and proximity, Corn’s and Rogovin’s style and approach yielded very 

245 International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum 

 

 

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different bodies of work. Through analysis that contrasts their work, this chapter explores the 

positioning of both photographers, which is essential to understanding their differences. 

Examining what influenced them in their development as photographers establishes critical 

understanding of both the aesthetic characteristics of their work and the discursive meaning of 

their photographs.  

 
 
THE TRADITION OF SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY WORK 
 

Considered a masterpiece of documentary expression, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is 

the product of a failed Fortune magazine assignment to document the lives of tenant farmers in 

rural Alabama in the waning years of the Great Depression. Unlike Harry Caudill’s confidence 

with his subjects in Night Comes to the Cumberlands, writer James Agee found frustration in his 

own limitations and inability to fully understand the context of the place he was sent to 

document. Compounding his frustration was what he viewed as inadequacies of the magazine 

essay and photographic series as mediums in capturing the true nature of the farmer’s lives. After 

abandoning the assignment, Agee and photographer Walker Evans collaborated on telling the 

story in book form. Journalism scholar Elfriede Fürsich suggests that observed documentation 

such as that created through a photographic record is mediated or influenced by the one doing the 

observing.246 The human act of observation strips away any idealized sense of sterile purity that 

may be inherent in the act of documentation. This mediation dictates that how something is 

represented and documented will depend on who is doing the observing that leads to that 

documentation. The human effect on documentation is what writer William Stott conceptualizes 

as social documentary. Stott writes that social documentaries “increase our knowledge of public 

246 Buozis and Creech, 2018: 1431 

 

 

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facts, but sharpen it with feeling; put us in touch with their perennial human spirit, but show it 

struggling in a particular social context at a specific historical moment.”247 Perhaps it is the 

struggle of the human spirit within the particulars of social context that Agee agonizes over 

capturing that makes his work so meaningful to discuss. Both Stott and psychologist Robert 

Coles discuss Agee, Evans and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men at length, using the book, its 

critique and approach as a framework for forming an understanding of documentary work. Both 

Corn and Rogovin stated Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was an important book to growth and 

understanding of their role as documentary photographers. Corn writes: “the book impressed me 

as much as anything during that period in my life. […] As I look at Walker Evans’ photographs 

today, I see the world I grew up in during the 1930s.”248 

Coles argues that what Agee and Evans are showing is that while documentary is a story, 

it is not, nor could it be the only story. Agee writes that through “documentary work, imagination 

encounters and tries to come to terms with reality; and the way in which that is done, the 

outcome achieved, is as varied as the individuals involved in the effort, the struggle.”249 Agee 

illustrates this point in suggesting that in another, perhaps purer form, his documentation of 

sharecroppers would consist not of words, but of photographs and “fragments of cloth, bits of 

cotton, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement.”250 By suggesting that experiencing the 

materiality of a reality through smell, touch and taste could shorten the gap between encounter 

and imagination in coming to terms with that reality, Agee is actually demonstrating how the 

choices one makes affects the outcome of documentary work. Corn and Rogovin saw similar 

 

247 Stott, 1973: 18 
248 Corn, 2000: 4 
249 Coles, 1997: x 
250 Coles, 1997: 3 

 

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realities in eastern Tennessee and central West Virginia, but their imaginations informed by the 

artists and photographers they individually admired, delivered them to different outcomes.  

WALKER EVANS 

 

 

The influence of Walker Evans on Corn and Rogovin is undeniable. Both photographers 

express the importance of Evans’ photographs and Agee’s words from Let Us Now Praise 

Famous Men as being foundational to their understanding of social documentary work, and their 

roles as documentarians. Evans was a prolific photographer, and evidence of his expansive body 

of work can be found in an 87-plate portfolio of his early FSA projects published in 1938 by the 

Museum of Modern Art. Accompanying the 75th-anniversary republication of “Walker Evans: 

American Photographs” was an essay from American writer and art critic Lincoln Kirstein. In 

the essay Kirstein connects the approach of early photographic masters like Mathew Brady and 

French photographer Eugène Atget in orienting their imagery to an object to Evans’ anti-art view 

of the photograph as a record. His images are direct, pointed and almost lyrical in the way they 

are self-contained, yet are connective to Evans’ broader vision and to the reality for which they 

are a proxy. Kirstein argues that Evans, like other early masters of the medium, aimed “to render 

the object, face, group, house or battlefield airlessly clear in the isolation of its accidental 

circumstances, to record the presence of every fact gathered within the net of rays focused on 

this lens, to create out of a fragmentary moment its own permanence.”251 The striking detail 

Evans achieves in his photographs accomplishes the objectified fragmentary moment by inviting 

an imaginative interaction with what is viewed in the document of an otherwise banal scene.  

251 Kirstein, 2012: 192 

 

 

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Focusing on four photographs from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, for example, one 

can begin to understand the connective lyricism of Evans’ fragmentary moments. Two portraits 

(Figure 70) and (Figure 71) depict southern sharecroppers. The first shows cotton farmer Floyd 

Burroughs gazing past his furrowed brow directly at Evans’ camera, his shirt crumpled and 

soiled, and denim overalls worn. The second portrait is of Burroughs’s wife, Allie Mae, leaning 

against the weathered planks of a clapboard-sided structure, most likely their home in Hale 

County Alabama. Her hair is pulled back, revealing the concern in her expression—eyes 

squinted, mouth thinly drawn across her face. Two more photographs (Figure 72) and 

(Figure 73), still humanistic, focus on structures of rural southern life without directly showing 

the people living it. The first photograph shows the corner of a room in the Burroughs home, 

containing four objects. There is a chair to the left side of the frame, pushed against the 

clapboard wall. Above the chair hangs a butter churn paddle, and to the left a piece of cloth with 

ragged edges. Leaning against the wall opposite the chair in the frame is a straw-bristle broom. 

The other photograph shows a small, slightly leaning structure, Evans labeled a chicken coop, 

made with uneven scraps of wood. A hinged door in the center of the building is left open, 

revealing a dark emptiness inside. Separately these four photographs tell individual stories, 

seemingly isolated from one another. Kirstein argues, however, that the apparent isolation of 

each of Evans’ scenes is an illusion created by his mastery of the medium. Kirstein writes: “They 

lack surface, obvious continuity of the moving picture, which by its physical orientation compels 

the observer to perceive a series of images as parts of whole. But these photographs, of necessity 

seen singly, are not conceived as isolated pictures made by the camera turned indiscriminately 

here or there. In intention and in effect they exist as a collection of statements deriving from and  

 

 

164 

Figure 70. “Alabama Tenant Farmer,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936. 

 

 

 

165 

Figure 71. “Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936. 

 

 

166 

Figure 72. “Kitchen Corner, Tenant Farmhouse,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936. 

 

 

167 

Figure 73. “Chicken Coop on Floyd Burroughs’ Farm,” Hale County, Alabama. Walker Evans, 1936. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

168 

presenting a consistent attitude.”252 Viewed separately, Evans’ portraits and structural 

photographs provide narrow glimpses into a way of life; viewed together, however, those 

glimpses become deeper, more human and more meaningful. Seeing the man and the woman, 

then the room and shed, one can picture those people in those places, even though they are not in 

the photograph Evans presents. One can imagine that broom being used, and that shed being 

built through their association with the other photographs. This imaginative interaction Evans 

creates in this photograph is perhaps the biggest influence of his work, on the work of Corn and 

Rogovin. Each photographer was able to understand what Evans was doing in his documentary 

work and combined it with other influences to execute their own visions.  

Corn recalls seeing a Monet Exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was first 

developing his photographic style. He said he felt a connection with the way Monet would paint 

the same haystacks in different seasons, lighting conditions and perspectives. Corn writes: 

“Many writers, painters, photographers and other kinds of artists seem drawn to this method of 

many different views of the same place or subject […] I hoped each image would be special and 

I spent long hours trying to obtain a photo that revealed the subject. I liked doing a series of 

photographs of one situation.”253 In addition to mimicking Monet and Evans approach to 

documenting a scene, Corn said he looked to the pages of LIFE magazine in the 1950s as 

inspiration of how to assemble photographic stories. “I believed that several pictures with good 

captions used together of the same subject could be a powerful document to communicate social 

ills.”254  

 

252 Kirstein, 2012: 194 
253 Corn, 2000: 5 
254 Corn, 2000: 6 

 

169 

Rogovin found inspiration in similar places. The work of Hine, Dorothea Lange and 

Margaret Burke-White were all influential in helping him develop his social aesthetic. Like 

Corn, Rogovin also connected with the works of classical painters – Francisco Goya, Honoré 

Daumier and Käthe Kollwitz – recalling that “those three artists had a greater influence on me 

than any of the photographers.”255 Rogovin said he was exposed to these painters’ works through 

reading the socialist periodicals Masses and The Daily Worker. Goya, in particular, appealed to 

Rogovin because of the painter’s de-emphasis of the heroic scene. On appreciating Goya, 

Rogovin writes: “Art can present the pathos of anonymous men and women whose lives are 

exemplary only insofar as they are shared by an immense mass of deprived and suffering 

humanity.”256 The anonymity of Goya’s subjects is a characteristic Rogovin adopts in his own 

work. Though he goes to great lengths to show his subjects as individuals, Rogovin never 

identifies them in any of his captions, titles or poems. As strong a connection as Corn and 

Rogovin felt to the work of Monet and Goya, they both were helped in their aesthetic journey to 

find their own perspective by the photographers who mentored them, Lee and Strand.    

PAUL STRAND 

 

 

Rogovin became acquainted with Strand through the Photo League, a New York-based 

cooperative of photographers whose work focused on social issues. Strand, along with 

photographers Berenice Abbott, Sid Grossman and Sol Libsohn, founded the Photo League in 

1936 at a time when similar photography collectives in Europe, such as the Arbeiter Illustrierte 

Zeitungà (AIZ), began to fracture and splinter as the continent moved closer to war.257 AIZ was a 

 

255 Rogovin, 1997: 13 
256 Rogovin, 1997: 13 
à Translation: Workers Illustrated News 
257 Haran, 2012: 469 

 

170 

byproduct of the worker photography movement, which heralded the slogan ‘the camera is a 

weapon in the class struggle’ and sought to help the “industrial proletariat to wrest the mass 

media from the bourgeoisie.”258 Not as radical as AIZ but wanting to use photography as an 

instrument for social justice, the Photo League’s membership was comprised of some the most 

notable photographers of the 20th century such as Hine, Jack Delano, Arthur Rothstein, W. 

Eugene Smith, Aaron Siskind and Arthur Fellig (Weegee).259 With his intersecting interests in 

photography and social issues, Rogovin felt an affinity with the group and began subscribing to 

its newsletter Photo Notes. Like Rogovin, the group had been targeted by the U.S. government 

and suspected of subversive sympathies. In 1948, the Photo League was placed on a list of 

“totalitarian, racist, communist or subversive” groups by U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark.260 

Wanting to distance itself from forbearer groups like the AIZ, the Photo League went out of its 

way to not be overtly political as an organization. The league’s president Walter Rosenblum and 

executive committee launched a legal and public relations campaign to fight against being 

associated with other groups on the list, such as the Ku Klux Klan, The Communist Party, or The 

Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In the keynote address of a special meeting of the 

Photo League’s members, Strand called for strength and unity against the oppressive tactics of a 

reactionary U.S. government. Excerpts of Strand’s speech were printed in a special issue of 

Photo Notes: 

“…We are not allowed to talk about photography tonight. A lot of other people in 
America are being prevented from discussing the things nearest them, the things which 
related to their creative work and creative lives. Instead, they are faced with the necessity 
of talking politics. Although artists have not in the past wanted to mix art with politics, 
the politicians have already mixed politics in art. […] To silence you, intimidate you, 
make you think before you speak or not dare to think your own thoughts, but to go along 

 

258 Haran, 2012: 469 
259 The Jewish Museum of New York 
260 Rosenblum, 1948: 1  

 

171 

with something that people are not willing to go along with—these are the objectives of 
the reactionary forces existing in our country today.” 
 

Rogovin kept a copy of this issue that included Strand’s speech and referenced it in his 

unpublished autobiography. Rogovin said that that he faced a similar pressure as Photo League 

faced after being labeled as being an ‘un-American’ organization. He said because of the HUAC 

investigation his own “political voice was essentially silenced.”261 

Rogovin began writing to Strand in 1966. Along with his first letter, he sent some 

photographs from his Store Front Churches series that were published in Aperture magazine. 

Strand’s initial response to Rogovin’s work was critical, yet encouraging. In his letter dated Sept. 

23, 1966, Strand writes: “That you are an artist, such photographs as pages 69–73 fully attest. 

And there are others perhaps a little less complete aesthetically and content wise. But you are 

also well on your way towards an even greater mastery of the photographic medium.”262 

Rogovin asked him specific questions about his aesthetic decisions and the sequencing of images 

and Strand replied: “A series of related and cumulative images such as you attempted, relates 

more to film as a medium than to literature (the essay) and the dialectical development of the 

best documentaries can perhaps be useful to examine. Also, the whole question of long, medium 

and close up shots as well as camera angles are very important when pictures are put together. 

But perhaps you have already considered these aesthetic questions long since.”263 Over time their 

letters become less formal, and Strand’s praise becomes more forthcoming as Rogovin’s style 

and technique develop. The two photographers’ and their wives Anne and Hazel develop a 

friendship and would visit when possible. In one letter post-dated Orgeal, France, Dec. 31, 1969 

261 Rogovin, 1997 
262 Strand, 1966 
263 Strand, 1966 

 

 

172 

Strand thanks Rogovin for a few prints he sent and suggests they meet during an upcoming trip 

to New York. Strand writes:  

“The photographs are expression both of your fast-growing mastery of the medium of 
photography itself and of your ability to communicate clearly the feeling you have for 
people, so understanding and warm. We have to see more of what you did in W. Virginia 
when we go to New York as we are in late January. This time we have rented an 
apartment at 244 East 5th Street, our “landlord,” our friend James Ceronson. We expect to 
have a phone but don’t know the number yet. In any case we will call you.”264  

 
This letter is indicative of the warm regard that developed between the two friends and shows 

Strand’s evolving commentary on Rogovin’s work. In their first exchange, Strand was pointed in 

what he saw as deficient in Rogovin’s work, whereas this letter three years later acknowledges 

growth and Rogovin’s strides toward mastery of the medium. In his letter to the Guggenheim 

Foundation in the mid-1970s, Strand recognizes Rogovin as a photographer who has realized his 

potential. Strand writes that the photographs in Rogovin’s Store Front Churches series “were in 

every way exceptional. They revealed an approach to reality which was deeply humanist and an 

esthetic sensibility mastering the medium.”265 Strand adds that “Rogovin is not searching for a 

path, he is a man at the height of his powers—who knows what he wants to do and how to do 

it.”266 

RUSSELL LEE 

A longtime admirer of FSA era photography, Corn said he met Lee at a National Press 

Photographers Association (NPPA) conference where Lee gave the keynote address. Lee was 

talking about doing documentary work, and Corn said that Lee convinced him the work he was 

264 Strand, 1969 
265 Strand, c. 1974 
266 Strand, c. 1974 

 

 

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doing in Clear Fork could be developed into a long-term project.267 Like Rogovin and Strand, 

Corn and Lee began corresponding and over many years developed a deep friendship and mutual 

respect. Corn said Lee was a tremendous mentor and helped shape his career and his approach to 

photography. Best known for his FSA work in Texas and New Mexico, Lee began his art career 

as a painter, using photography to create reference material for his compositions.268 As his 

interest in photography grew, Lee used photographs as the sole medium in early exploration of 

bootleg coal mining in Pennsylvania. In 1937 he was hired by Roy Striker to join the FSA and 

abandoned painting to focus on photography. After the FSA was defunded in 1943, Lee served in 

the U.S. Army Air Transport Command, where he documented airfields used to supply allied 

troops during WWII. After the war he continued his documentary work for the U.S. government, 

helping the Department of the Interior survey the health of workers in the coal fields of Kentucky 

and West Virginia. The result of the work was a 1947 report titled “A Medical Survey of the 

Bituminous-Coal Industry” (Figure 74) which employed field research teams to interview and 

examine miners to gather information about their health. From an occupational epidemiology 

perspective this report and others examining the health of dye and smelting workers provided 

important evidence concerning the hazard U.S. workers faced.269 Beginning in the 1920s, the 

nature of one’s work started to become an important consideration in helping to diagnose and 

treat a number of illnesses that were discovered to be work-related, such as black lung disease.  

Like Hine’s photographs for the NCLC more than two decades earlier, Lee’s images for 

the medical survey illuminate the working conditions of coal miners. Instead of focusing on the 

forced labor of children, Lee illustrated how the process of mining itself affected the miners. The  

 

267 Corn, 2019 
268 Indiana University Art Museum 
269 Stellman, 2003 

 

174 

 
Figure 74. Cover Artwork, “A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry,” United States Department of the Interior, 1947. 
 

 

175 

machinery used in the mechanization of mining—drillers and excavators—creates a greater 

volume of particulate matter than traditional pick-and-shovel methods. Aided by Lee’s  

photographs, the report suggests that the increase of mechanization in the 1930s coincides with a 

rise in black lung like illness caused by sustained inhalation of coal dust. For example, one  

photograph from the report (Figure 75) shows a miner, crouched over on his knees shoveling 

‘big dust’ into a pile next to a coal cart track. Big dust, the images’ caption explains, is a mixture 

of ground slate and coal and a byproduct of drilling machines used to get at the coal which can 

be seen simmering iridescently in the background. The coal shafts were typically not well 

ventilated, and miners like the one in Lee’s photograph worked without masks or respirators to 

prevent them from inhaling the coal dust. Lee’s subjects seem less aware of his presence and 

camera than Hine’s, giving his photographs a more natural look. For example, Lee’s photograph 

titled “A miner. Lejunior, Harlan County, KY.” (Figure 76) shows a miner between shifts 

holding his lunch pail under his arm as he smokes a pipe. His posture is relaxed, with his 

attention focused on something out of the frame. The distraction of the miner allowed Lee to 

capture this candid moment showing the miners as they naturally were. Corn said this natural 

candid style is what he tried to accomplish in his own work, writing: “As I learned the craft of 

photojournalism, I tried to develop a system of photography that did not pose and direct people 

as much. I preferred to spend lots of time with the subject and to have a good reporter draw 

attention away from me, and I was blessed with helpful ones most of the time.”270  

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter once again commissioned a government report related to 

the coal industry. The President’s Commission on Coal, led by West Virginia Governor John D. 

Rockefeller IV, produced the report titled “The American Coal Miner: A Report on Community  

270 Corn, 2000: 4 

 

 

176 

Figure 75. “Harry Fain, coal loader,” Wheelwright, Floyd County, KY. Russell Lee, 1946. 

 

 

 

177 

Figure 76. “A miner,” Lejunior, Harlan County, KY. Russell Lee, 1947. 

 

 

 

 

178 

and Living Conditions in the Coalfields” using a similar methodology as the 1947 medical 

survey. Teams of field researchers and photographers were dispatched to coal fields across the  

American West and throughout Appalachia to investigate living conditions in coal mining 

communities. Having worked on the prior report, Lee was hired as the photography advisor. Lee 

had previously encouraged Corn to submit a proposal to work on the EPA project Documerica, 

and when it came time to hire photographers for the president’s report, he invited Corn to 

contribute to the project as well. Corn left The Tennessean in 1977 to join the faculty at Western 

Kentucky University as a photojournalist in residence. The coal report was an opportunity for 

him to continue the work he had done over two decades at the newspaper. The same year they 

began working on the president’s report, the two photographers also served together as faculty 

for the 29th Missouri Photography Workshop (MPW), held in Cassville Missouri. Inspired by the 

power of photographic storytelling of the FSA, Lee, along with Roy Stryker, helped 

photojournalism program director Clifton Edom establish the MPW at the University of Missouri 

in 1949. The workshop was founded with the mission to “promote research, observation, and 

timing as the methods to make strong story-telling photographs,”271 all of which were methods 

Corn adopted in the development of his approach to social documentary work. 

INFLUENCES IN PLAY: CONTRASTING GENRES AND CONTRASTING APPROACHES 
TO DOCUMENTARY WORK 

 

Genre is an efficient way to organize photographs into categories based on shared 

features. Categorization through genre can be useful in analysis at the site of the image to help 

reach understanding of what a photograph is showing, how it is being shown, why objects are 

 
271 Missouri Photography Workshop 

 

179 

organized the way they are in a frame, and what the photograph is meant to do.272 Establishing 

genre can also be useful in analysis of other photographic sites as well, such as considering how 

a photograph was made at the site of production, and who a photograph was made for in 

considering the site of the audience. There are many genres of photography: street photography, 

documentary photography, portraiture, photojournalism, sports photography, fashion 

photography, and illustration, to name a few, and they all possess particular features that afford 

inclusion into one category or another. Photographic genre, and the features that define them, are 

fluid, however, creating the possibility that genres can overlap; a photograph or set of 

photographs can belong to more than one genre; at times, sub-genres are necessary to further 

categorize a group of photographs; and a primary genre in one context may be a sub-genre in 

another. For example, photojournalism has many sub-genres, such as spot news or feature 

photography, and as a genre, photojournalism often overlaps with other genres such as 

documentary and sports photography.273 This discussion focuses on two sub-genre approaches to 

social documentary: the photojournalism approach taken by Corn and the portraiture approach 

taken by Rogovin.  

While the influence of photographers such as Hine and Evans can certainly be seen in 

Corn’s and Rogovin’s work, they both deviate from earlier aesthetics in different ways to show 

not only the miners at work, but also at home. Both Rogovin’s “Appalachia” and “Family of 

Miners” series explore tensions between public and private personas, and he relied heavily on 

diptych portraiture to present contrasting views of the miners’ lives. He would photograph them 

at work, soot-covered and stoic, following in Hine’s tradition of miner portraiture; but he would 

also photograph them later the same day, or the following day, before or after their shifts, 

272 Rose, 2016: 28 
273 Newton, 2008: 5 

 

 

180 

typically at their homes. Rogovin’s style of portraiture was informal, but deliberate. Like Evans, 

Rogovin didn’t talk a lot while photographing—wanting an element of spontaneity he left quite a 

bit to chance and took great care to not overly prompt or direct his subjects. In historian Michael 

Frisch’s 1993 book Portraits of Steel a worker photographed (Figure 77) in his hometown of 

Buffalo, New York recalls her interaction with Rogovin. “It wasn’t posed or anything, I was just  

doing my job. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, just took the picture and asked could he come by 

my house to take another. And I guess it’s a good thing he did, because nobody knew that 

‘before picture was me, until they saw the ‘after.’”274 Rogovin’s portrait of the woman feels  

casual yet industrial. Rogovin uses depth of field to show the mechanisms central to the woman’s 

workspace. But their inclusion in the frame is tertiary to the worker; the machines are present but 

not emphasized. A shadow of the woman’s head wrap can be seen cast on the metal bin of parts 

behind her by Rogovin’s flash. In calculating his exposure, he uses just enough artificial light to 

make the woman and her immediate station bright and stand out against the darker, shadowy 

mechanized world behind her. While he was careful in his control of light and composition, he is 

equally careful not to control the worker’s pose. She is seen turning back toward the camera, as 

suggesting the moment was fleeting—a brief pause in her workday. 

Not controlling every aspect of the image allowed for collaborative co-creation with his 

subjects. However, Rogovin was, like his mentor Strand, very deliberate with how his subjects 

were arranged in the frame. A diptych (Figure 78) he created of an Appalachian miner and his 

wife in 1987 is a good example of his simple but thoughtful approach to composition. In the 

portrait on the left, the miner sits on a bench wearing his hardhat, soot-covered overalls and coat, 

accompanied by his metal lunch pail and thermos. In the portrait on the right, he is clean,  

274 Rogovin & Keller, 2005: 6 

 

 

181 

Figure 77. “Working People, Markel Electric,” Buffalo, New York. Milton Rogovin, 1979–1980. 

 

 

 

182 

 

Figure 78. Appalachian miner and wife. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987.  

 

wearing pressed slacks and collared shirt as he stands holding his wife’s hand and possessing a 

softer, less austere expression. In the background is where Rogovin works to tie these portraits 

together. On the left, the darkness of a window occupies the frame above the miner’s right 

shoulder; on the right it is an open door in the same position. On the left, it’s the strong 

horizontal lines of the cinderblock wall and bench planks that guide the eye from one side  

of the photograph to the other; on the right it is the bright table stitched into the needlepoint 

depicting DaVinci’s “Last Supper” hanging on the wall behind them and the flat plane of the 

credenza top below it that offer a similar horizontal motion. 

 

Corn also wanted to show not just the work, but the lives of miners, and did so to a far 

greater extent than Rogovin. Mining is hard. It’s dangerous, punishing, depriving, unforgiving, 

and devastating and in the end offers little in return, other than the pride the miner felt having 

endured the work. The physical, emotional, economic and environmental hardship of mining,  

however, was not experienced just by the miners, but by their families and community as well—

and that is what Corn’s work shows. Corn’s photographs of the Clear Fork Valley are as 

 

183 

informational as they are intimate. Corn’s approach as a photojournalist was what Stott suggests 

is the very foundation of social documentary work: to capture the particulars of social struggle in 

the context of a specific historical moment. Corn applied that approach to document the entire 

community, not just the miners, examining many particulars of struggle, as experienced by many 

people in that moment. Many of Corn’s photographs don’t show miners or mines; they are of 

children or infrastructure left in decay; the devastating effect of the poverty inflicted on the area 

once mining companies abandoned the towns they built. In one such photograph (Figure 79) 

titled “Snow Covered Appalachian Scene,” Corn uses a railroad track to bisect the snowy scene. 

In the background, a cluster of rundown structures can be seen along with groupings of vehicles, 

trailers and other mechanical equipment near Clairfield, Tennessee. Below the tracks in the 

foreground is the Straight Creek. Overturned vehicles break the center line created  

by the railroad track spilling from background to foreground, littering the creek. Creating this 

sense of demarcation, Corn shows the encroachment of the human world and the natural world, 

and the affect complacency can have on the environment. Corn said that at this point in time 

people just didn’t care anymore. The creek itself was highly polluted from mining run off, so 

they didn’t see the harm in filling it with debris.275  

Heavily influenced by the images produced by FSA photographers in the 1930s, Lee in 

particular, the intimacy and hardship they convey make Corn’s photographs appear as though 

they could have been from the FSA era. Examine two photographs, one made by Lee  

(Figure 80), and one by Corn (Figure 81), for example. Both show children living in forlorn  

275 Corn, 2019 

 

 

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Figure 79. Snow covered houses, railroad tracks and creek in Clairfield, Tennessee. Jack Corn, 1964. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

185 

Figure 80. “Daughter of migrant in doorway of trailer, Sebastian, Texas.” Photograph by Russell Lee, 1939. 

 

 

 

186 

Figure 81. Three Marlowe children stand in doorway of cabin. This photograph was used by LBJ  

as part of a speech to launch the Appalachian War on Poverty. Jack Corn, 1963. 

 

 

 

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conditions, they are downtrodden and sullen in their expression as they peer out through the 

doorway of their ramshackle homes. A contact sheet (Figure 82), reveals that Corn made one  

exposure of this scene. The frame before it is of a miner, Lewis Teague, pushing a railcar loaded 

with coal out of a dog hole mineà operated by his uncle Lewis Teague; the frame after is of the 

children’s mother, Mabel Marlowe. Corn and reporter Bill Kovach went to the home, rented by 

the Marlowe family for $5 per month, to talk to Mabel about her husband Ed. An electrician by 

trade, Ed Marlowe was paralyzed when the roof of a dog hole mine, similar to Teague’s mine, 

collapsed crushing his legs and breaking his back on Nov. 22, 1963. Corn said he and Kovach 

were outside talking to Mabel, when he heard the voice of the oldest child Denise singing “Jesus 

Loves the Little Children”—he turned and snapped the picture.276 Corn frames the scene tightly 

which allows the viewer to focus on the children who all bear a familial resemblance. Denise, the 

oldest child braces herself against the door. Her right arm reaches across her body and hunkers 

her in as her hand clasps the door frame. She peers with caution from the doorway as her 

younger brothers file in behind her. Their natural arrangement creates a perfect sense of 

geometry with the varying heights of their heads suggesting an aesthetically pleasing triangle.  

Growing up along railroad tracks on the outskirts of Nashville in the 1930s, Corn said 

photographs of that era from FSA photographers reminded him of the world as it was in his 

childhood. He said it was striking that stepping into the Clear Fork Valley in the late 1950s and 

60s was like stepping back into his childhood and seeing the world as it was during the 

Depression.277 Corn’s admission—that seeing the conditions people were living in across the 

 

à Dog hole mines are very small, shallow mines typically operated by a single individual or small group of 
independent miners.  
276 Corn, 2000 
277 Corn, 2000; Corn, 2019 

 

188 

Figure 82. Photograph of a contact sheet from a 1963 Jack Corn photoshoot in Clear Fork Valley, Tennessee.  

 

Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

189 

Clear Fork Valley reminded him of the Great Depression—provides insight into the influence 

depression era photographers had on how he would approach documenting what he saw. Corn 

drew upon the direct and dramatic documentary style of his photographic idols Lee and Evans to 

produce a deep, thoughtful and intimate record of the lives of Clear Fork residents. Corn has  

stated that when he first visited the region, he began making a different type of picture and this 

reinforces the profound effect that both place and people had on what his photographs looked 

like.  

 

190 

CHAPTER 6  

THE POSTMISTRESS PAVED THE WAY: AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE AND 

GAINING ACCESS TO SUBJECTS IN ISOLATED COMMUNITIES 

 
 
“I don’t want to hear the words lazy and shiftless used. Anyone who crawls into a hole in the side 
of a mountain, to scratch out $3 to $5 a day, all the while taking a chance on the roof falling in 

and killing them is not lazy.” 

 

 

— Louise Adams, 1964 

 

 

This quote from a 1964 article in The Tennessean represents the relentless support for 

community, and suspicion of the press, held by Clairfield postmaster Louise Adams. An activist 

and community gatekeeper, Adams was well-connected in the community and used her status 

and authority as a federal employee to advocate for her neighbors. Local actors, such as Adams, 

across Appalachia are often an outsider’s way into isolated communities that are both 

geographically and socially hard to reach. To whom one of these actors decides to give access, 

and what they are providing access to, is an important consideration in making meaning of what 

is produced as a result of the access.278 During the process of creating and assembling 

documents, writers, photographers, producers and even subjects themselves shape the narrative 

through their choices. For the documentarians, it is the choices they make through language, 

descriptive style, lenses, angles, what to include in a frame and what not to include, that can 

dramatically affect the document. For the subjects, it is the retention of their individual agency 

that adds a layer of meaning to the construction of reality represented in the documents. From 

this Foucauldian perspective, it is not just the observer but also what or whom is being observed 

that affects the reality represented in a social document. One way to look at documentary work, 

then, is as a receipt following the completion of a social transaction. Documentary work is 

278 Coles, 1997 

 

 

191 

certainly, as James Agee, Robert Coles and William Stott all suggest, sharing of that which has 

been witnessed. But it is also a type of interpretive negotiation between observer and observed. 

In the case of photography, there is an inherent tension for control over representation. Visual 

communication scholar Julianne Newton describes this tension as an exchange, a transferring of 

control, power, authority and/or intimacy from one person to another.279 This transfer can be 

collaborative, or it can be exploitive depending on the particulars of the interaction and the 

exchange, and the relationship established between the agents involved. 

Whom a photographer photographs is critical in understanding the context and meaning 

of a photograph. It is essential, then, to understand how Milton Rogovin and Jack Corn accessed 

the people and places they photographed, and the tactics and approaches they used in developing 

relationships with their subjects. Both photographers worked in isolated environments, and this 

chapter addresses the effect their positioning as outsiders had on their approach to developing 

relationships with their subjects. Included in this discussion is consideration of local gatekeepers 

such as union leaders or mine management, or public officials who provided these photographers 

access to their subjects, and how what they gave access to influenced the visual discourse of 

mining in Appalachia. As detrimental as extraction is to the physical landscape, it is also big 

business. Corporations produced a variety of materials that emphasized the need for and benefit 

of coal to the nation and local communities. The discourse of these materials conflicts with the 

discourse found in materials produced by worker advocacy groups, unions, and environmental 

organizations. Corn and Rogovin were given access to and used materials from a variety of 

sources to inform their picture-making. Audience is also critical to examine in understanding the 

work of these two photographers. Corn and Rogovin gave those who viewed their photographs 

279 Newton 2013: 35–36 

 

 

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vicarious access to the coal mining communities, just as their local contacts gave them access to 

their subjects. Rogovin was an independent documentary photographer whose work was viewed 

in galleries and museum exhibitions. As a staff photojournalist, Corn’s work was viewed in a 

very different way. Exploration of the circulation and use of their photographs is vital to 

understanding their discursive power. 

THE VIEW FROM THE BALCONY DEPENDS ON THE VIEWER: EXPLORING INSIDER 
VERSUS OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVES IN DOCUMENTARY WORK 

 

Revisiting the discussion around the difference between Harry Caudill and Agee from the 

previous chapter is a helpful entry point in understanding insider and outsider perspectives in 

documentary work. Caudill, an insider, observed and documented his home, Letcher County, 

Kentucky and surrounding areas; Agee a journalist from New York, was very much an outsider 

to the Alabama tenant farming communities he set out to document in 1936. These two 

perspectives and approaches—that of the insider and that of the outsider—were instrumental in 

the success and failure of Caudill and Agee’s production of social documentary. It’s not talent or 

intent that elevates Caudill’s work; Agee was arguably a much better writer but struggled in the 

South and failed to complete his assignment for Fortune magazine. The difference between the 

two was a matter of perspective that comes from knowledge of place—it is his deep, undeniable 

connection to the Cumberland Plateau that provides the overtly authoritative precision found in 

Caudill’s writing. He didn’t just live in this vast Kentucky wilderness; his identity was formed by 

it, making his knowledge of the place felt, not learned. Five generations of Caudill’s inhabited 

the land from which he was born, the land that elected him three times to represent it in the 

Kentucky Legislature, and on which he died in 1990. One of the most vital factors distinguishing 

 

193 

Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands from Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, is the 

perspective and positioning of the observer.  

Positioning is the source of one of Mary Louise Pratt’s chief complaints in “Imperial 

Eyes,” as discussed in chapter two. The outsider’s position of view is fleeting, bringing the 

completeness of their witnessing into question. She discusses American essayist Joan Didion’s 

rush to El Salvador to rhetorize the political uprising of the early 1980s. Pratt’s discourse likens 

Didion to a conflict tourist and argues that her metaphoric view from the balcony of the San 

Salvador Sheraton hotel eroded her ability to fully see what was going on. Pratt writes: “The 

voice and authority of the metropolitan subject attenuate in Salvador to the point not of 

dissolution, but of disillusionment. Being there processes a sense neither of dominance (as in 

Burton and Theroux) nor self-realization (as in Kingsley and Wright). Repeatedly Didion depicts 

herself as seeing less than she expected, or averting her eyes when the expected unexpectedly 

occurs.”280 Pratt suggests that the lack of detail Didion provides in Salvador is an admission that 

true knowledge of the uprising was inaccessible to her from a position of western privilege and 

the limited view it affords.281  

Robert Coles discusses privilege extensively in Doing Documentary Work. He explores 

the tension between George Orwell’s inconsistent views of the proletariat in Road to Wigan Pier. 

Orwell strains to reconcile his admiration and heroic vision of miners in England’s pre-World 

War II industrial north with the distain of the inn keepers who housed him, and his perception 

that they lived with wallow and filth. More pointedly Coles uses his own experience doing 

fieldwork in Louisiana to illustrate how privilege and the temporality of an outsider’s view 

affects relationships with subjects. Coles recalls sitting in the home of one of his patients, having 

280 Pratt, 1992: 227 
281 Pratt, 1992: 229 

 

 

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coffee and cake when the patient’s mother said to him: “We’ll be missing you. We’ve got so 

used to you coming here, that we’ve forgot you’re only going to be with us so long, and then 

you’ll be on your way!”282 Coles admits it was difficult for him to separate from the subjects of 

his fieldwork whom he had formed such close relationships with and the community he had 

developed an attachment to, but said understanding their roles helped him cope. He writes:  

“An intense human connection was about to be concluded, an affair of the heart, often 
enough, put to rest, hence the sadness and apprehension. But in clinical work there is an 
entire tradition that helps one sort out such feelings and move on—the two of you are 
doctor and patient, or the group of you are a doctor and a family with whom you’ve tried 
to work, and you’ve done so in a clinic or an office, with the clock setting its own limits 
and helping define what is happening: a professional life, with its hours.”283  

 
Documentary work, like clinical fieldwork, operates in a similar structure of professional 

relationships, only instead of the roles being doctor and patient, it is photographer and subject. 

Respect, empathy or egalitarian motives aside, it is important to recognize that both Corn and 

Rogovin, like Didion, Orwell and Coles, were documenting an impoverished place while they 

occupied privileged positions. This acknowledgement doesn’t suggest an inability to show 

understanding or compassion, or form real, meaningful connections with individuals; it simply 

underscores how the nature of their role and activity as documentarians relates to the subjects of 

their photographs and the temporary nature of their encounter.  

 
AQUIRING KNOWLEDGE OF APPALACHIA  

 

 

Being outsiders, Corn and Rogovin needed to gain a deeper understanding of the places 

and people they documented. Both were committed to researching the culture and issues of the 

Appalachian coalfields to gain more meaningful contexts for the challenges and successes they 

 

282 Coles, 1997: 62 
283 Coles, 1997: 62–63 

 

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witnessed there. They were given access to a wide variety of materials from the people they 

observed. They collected, studied and carefully considered folk life publications, music, art, 

technical materials related to the production of coal, union literature, and news clippings related 

to the region. Examining these materials contributes to understanding discourses that informed 

the way Corn and Rogovin saw the region. Corn subscribed to a Clear Fork Valley community 

newsletter called “What on Earth” (WOE) to stay connected with the valley in between visits. 

Produced monthly, WOE is one of the many initiatives born out of Cirillo and Adams’s Model 

Valley Project. Still being published, WOE is now produced by the Clearfork Community 

Institute (CCI), which Carrillo founded in 1997. The newsletter includes a community calendar 

and features on the outreach and advocacy work being done by the institute. Corn also 

subscribed to the United Mine Workers Journal and included a few issues that focused on black 

lung disease with research materials he used in preparing his assignment proposal for the 

Documerica project. One article urges working miners to take advantage of free lung x-rays that 

were provided as a provision of the 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. The article 

describes how, if the x-ray revealed signs of black lung disease, the miners were entitled to a 

transfer out of the mine to a different position which would be made available within the 

company at their current rate of pay. Another article outlines a U.S. Department of Justice 

investigation into the falsification of dust reports by Consolidation Coal Company (CONSOL) 

relating to its Hanna Division mines in Ohio. CONSOL was being accused of mislabeling 

samples taken during low production where low levels of dust was present, as being from peak 

production when coal dust levels were higher. It also was accused of opening samples and 

removing significant amounts of dust, to make the levels appear lower.284  

284 Stillman, 1974 

 

 

196 

The types of materials Corn collected for research are reflected in his work. Social justice 

issues such as access to education and the health and safety of miners are major themes that run 

throughout Corn’s Appalachia photographs. Paying particular attention to the ever-present threat 

of mortality that miners faced as a consequence of their work, Corn was sensitive but direct in 

his approach to showing danger in the coal fields. His visual statements are bold, as in the case of 

his photograph titled “Big Rock at Clairfield, TN,” which is dramatic scene symbolic in its 

representation of the omnipresence of death. The photograph (Figure 83) shows a large rock with 

the words “PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD” painted on the surface. Accompanying the words 

are a cross and a star, Christian symbols representing the crucifixion, sacrifice and wounds of 

Christ. Visible to those entering the mining area, the rock sits alongside a road in Clairfield used 

to access the coal tipple, which can be seen looming in the background beneath a mountain and 

an ominous sky. Corn’s layering of religious and industrial imagery creates a foreboding 

message. The selective angle of view uses the road to put some distance between the tipple and 

message of death as if to offer some metaphoric protection to the miner. A clearing in the sky 

creeping up from behind the mountain carries an almost peaceful acceptance of the fate that 

befalls some miners.  

This macabre fate is captured in some of Corn’s photographs made for The Tennessean 

coverage of an explosion at the C. L. Kline mine in Scott County, Tennessee. In one photograph 

(Figure 84) a crowd can be seen gathered along a ridge watching as injured rescue workers and 

miners are pulled from the mine entrance below; the caption describes them as family members 

waiting to see if their loved ones are among the rescued. The tightness of Corn’s frame along 

with the sparseness of the background focuses the viewers’ attention on the huddled group of 

bystanders as they comfort one another. The implication of leading lines created by the gaze of  

 

197 

Figure 83. “Big rock at Clairfield, TN,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

 

198 

Figure 84. “Family members wait for survivors to be rescued,” Jack Corn, 1965. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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some of the bystanders looking toward two grieving women positioned in the center of the frame 

also draws the viewer’s eyes inward.  

Issues of mortality are also explored through Corn’s documentation of south Appalachian 

ancestral burial practices, specifically Decoration Day rituals that underscore the European 

Christian ancestry of the early Appalachian mountaineer. The photograph titled “Louise Adams 

with Covered Graves” (Figure 85) shows the Clairfield postmaster visiting the burial sites of 

some of her extended family on King Mountain. Adams appears still, arms relaxed at her side as 

she stands with her back to the viewer looking upon a latticed structure called a grave house. 

These structures are common across southern Appalachia and were often built to protect the 

graves of loved ones from natural elements, ghouls and grave robbers.285 In the foreground of the 

photograph a wooden post supporting a barbed-wire fence can be seen sequestering Adams and 

the covered graves from Corn’s position. Inclusion of the fence in the bottom of the frame 

reinforces a sense of reverence and sacredness of the grave site. The pitch of the grave roofs 

mimics the downward slope of the mountain seen in the background and both work to draw the 

viewer to Adams. During ritual days family often gather at grave sites to plant flowers, decorate 

with mementos and have a picnic to honor their loved one’s memories, much like the Día De Los 

Muertos celebrations common in Mexico. This is the scene being shown in Corn’s photograph 

(Figure 86) titled “Two women at grave decoration.” Unlike the photograph showing Adams in 

quiet reflection, this photograph is full of movement and life. Corn’s use of a wide-angle lens 

opens up the frame to reveal plenty of the cemetery in McBurg, Tennessee—the setting for this 

celebratory scene. Emphasis is given to a pair of women walking to a gravesite by Corn’s  

 

285 Frederick, 1991 

 

 

200 

Figure 85. “Louise Adams with covered graves,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

 

Figure 86. “Two women at grave decoration,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 
 

 

201 

placement of them in the foreground, at the bottom and left-third of the photograph. The women 

seem well aware of Corn as they look at the camera but seem unbothered by his presence. The 

woman on the right smiles as she carries flowers, while the other carries baskets of food for a 

Decoration Day picnic. Corn’s use of depth of field reveals another pair of women walking in the 

distance behind them. The stark whiteness of a sedan even further in the background at the far-

right edge of the frame draws attention to an open car door as even more people arrive at the 

celebration. The complexity Corn has created in this photograph, through his use of angle of 

view and depth of field, gives the photograph energy that celebrates the ritual being depicted as a 

joyous occasion of remembrance.  

Tradition is important in Appalachia, like the rituals surrounding death and remembrance. 

Corn realized this through his research and the interactions he had with his subjects. While at 

first, he may have been drawn to the region by social outrage, wanting to create change through 

documenting the poverty and pollution there, his body of work is broader than the romanticized 

pictures of poverty that are common of the region. He did not just focus on what he or other 

outsiders deemed to be important issues to document, he also took great care in documenting 

what was important to the people of the Clear Fork Valley, like music and craftsmanship. Corn’s 

photograph titled “Fiddle player with child in door,” (Figure 87) shows a man reveling in delight 

as he plays his fiddle outside his mountain home in Clairfield. Corn has created an abundance of 

movement in this photograph that is symbolic of the quick and angular movements associated 

with playing the fiddle. Holding the instrument under his chin forces the player’s face to be 

turned down and away from the viewer. The direction of his stare leads the eye down the fiddle’s 

neck to the movement of his fingers on the fingerboard. The perpendicular movement of the bow 

being drawn across the strings leads the eye over to an open black fiddle case resting on a chair.  

 

202 

Figure 87. “Fiddle player with child in door,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

Figure 88. “J. Hatfield quilting at home,” Jack Corn, 1957–1978. 

 

203 

 

 

 

 

The angle of the case moves the viewer’s attention back up to child standing in an open doorway 

in the background. The great tradition of Appalachian folk art is well represented in Corn’s 

work, as he photographed musicians, woodcarvers, crafters, metalworkers and quilters 

throughout the Clear Fork Valley and northeast Tennessee. The photograph titled “J. Hatfield 

quilting at home” (Figure 88), illustrates the resourcefulness of Appalachian artists in producing 

their craft. Using a wide angle of view, Corn shows a woman standing at a quilting loom 

suspended from a bedroom ceiling. Four beds can be seen beneath the meticulously stitched 

patchwork tapestry that appears to levitate in the center of the room. The dual purpose of the 

space as both sleeping and crafting quarters is indicative of the cramped and overcrowded homes 

often shared by multiple generations. Hatfield stares intensely at her hand as she stiches together 

bits of cloth illuminated by the globe-less pull string light fixture above. The visual complexity 

of Corn’s image mirrors the complexity of the issue of space in many parts of Appalachia. Cirillo 

said that housing options are scarce in the Clear Fork Valley. With most of the land leased by  

coal companies, there is simply not enough space for houses. Generations of one family are 

forced to cram into small houses on tiny plots of land, or in many cases, share the same house.286  

  Rogovin took a similar approach to Corn in his research by immersing himself in 

literature from the region. Like Corn, he collected copies of the United Mine Workers Journal, 

and a variety of pamphlets and folk life publications from Appalachian cultural and advocacy 

groups. Rogovin was also heavily influenced by news media reporting of coal mining 

communities throughout Appalachia. A file folder called “background material” full of  

newspaper clippings are among Rogovin’s textural archive at the Library of Congress. Among 

the materials Rogovin collected was a 32-page investigative report titled “The Ugly Mark of 

286 Cirillo, 2019 

 

 

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Strip Mining” (Figure 89) published by The Tennessean. The special publication contained a 

series of articles and editorials written by science news editor William Greenburg and was 

illustrated by 16 of Corn’s photographs from the Clear Fork Valley, along with editorial 

cartoons, line drawings, diagrams and charts. This publication, containing Corn’s photographs, 

helped inform Rogovin’s photographs in Appalachia and creates an undeniable connection 

between the work of these two photographers. This connection is best seen in Rogovin’s early 

Appalachia photographs which depart from his signature diptych portraiture style he developed 

photographing workers around Buffalo, New York. Photographs from his first trips to West 

Virginia in the early 1960s and early 70s mirror the scattered impressions of the area found in his 

sketches. Rogovin used his labor contacts to get him access to mines in West Virginia and 

Kentucky though United Mine Workers. Letters to local union leaders and community  

activists suggest he was seeking to specifically photograph poverty in eastern Kentucky and 

West Virginian coal fields. But his vision was met with mixed reactions locally.  

In 1969, he wrote a letter to Dr. Donald Gatch of Bluffton, South Carolina outlining his 

Appalachia project. Known as “The Hunger Doctor,” Gatch had gained a national reputation by 

speaking out about widespread chronic malnutrition in southern Appalachia. His fight against 

hunger positioned him as a target for state officials who found his advocacy for the poor 

inconvenient and contradictory to the image of South Carolina they wanted to project. Finding 

his calls for better nutrition counterproductive to attracting new business and tourism, South 

Carolina Governor Robert McNair and U.S. Senator Ernest Hollings lead efforts to have his  

medical license revoked.287 His unseemly warnings of the spread of hunger-based diseases such 

as scurvy and rickets also led U.S. Representative Jamie Whitten of Mississippi to call for an FBI  

287 Nolan, 1971 

 

 

205 

Figure 89. The Ugly Mark of Strip Mining, 8 ½ x 11 inches. The Tennessean, Nashville, TN. Sept. 12, 1971. 

 

 

206 

investigation of Gatch’s medical practice.288 On Gatch’s behalf, Rogovin received a response 

from a University of California, Santa Cruz student named Carrall Seron.à Seron, an American 

Studies undergraduate working with the malnourished community Gatch’s practice served, 

warned Rogovin against making poverty the focus of his project. In a letter dated April 6, 1969 

Seron writes: “Many people have been very interested in doing a photo essay of this area. It’s 

hard to argue that it is not a good idea as pictures so very often speak better than words. Yet I 

feel that I can pretty safely say that the people here are very tired of being photographed over and 

over again.”289 She suggests that advocacy and social change should begin in one’s backyard, in 

their own community, and that perhaps Rogovin could look for poverty in Buffalo to photograph. 

She continues: “Perhaps using the expose of this community as a beginning, and then blowing 

your own area open might have more meaning for your neighbors. One always feels safe when 

poverty is far away, but the shock of seeing it near home might light a spark in some apathetic 

individuals.”290 Seron’s suggestion of looking a little closer to home underscores Don West’s 

notion that for visitors there was a mythical and quasi-romantic draw to Appalachian poverty—it 

was easily romanticized by those that could be a temporary witness but then look away with 

longing and affection.  

Like Corn, early on Rogovin appears to fall victim to romanticism and his photographs 

fulfill the outsider’s view of the Appalachia he sought—focusing more on the structure of 

poverty than revealing the human spirit that dwelt there. For example, his untitled photograph of 

the Helen, West Virginia Post Office (Figure 90) shows a building in disrepair; its paint is  

 

288 Nolan, 1971 
à Carroll Seron is a sociologist and currently a professor of Criminology, Law & Society at The University of 
California, Irvine. 
289 Seron, 1969 
290 Seron, 1969 

 

207 

Figure 90. Untitled Helen, West Virginia. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

208 

peeling, and a sheet of steel mesh covers the window showing signs it has been forgotten and 

neglected. Rogovin’s composition takes on an almost neo-classical appearance with the stacked 

main elements falling within column like spaces horizontally spanning the frame. The sign 

stacked above the letter box; the sign stacked above the door; the long downward drape of the 

flag; the gridded window all reinforces the photograph’s structure. Fighting against the vertices 

of the columnar structure are the thin horizontal lines of the clapboard siding, which create visual 

tension within the composition across the frame. The photograph is cold and humanless—far 

from the aesthetic that celebrates human laborers in both his earlier and later series. This and 

other images of derelict structures show the early vision Rogovin had for his mining project. 

Aesthetically they seem to pay homage to his mentor Paul Strand in their detail and 

characteristically ridged composition. For example, Rogovin’s photograph (Figure 91) of a  

young boy shirtless and expressionless as he sits at a small table, reads like Strand’s “The Lusetti 

Family, Luzzara, Italy, 1953” (Figure 92) with the grid-like precision of its composition—every 

element is exact in its placement in the frame. Like in his photograph of the post office, this 

image is an exploration of tension. The portrait reveals an expansion of Rogovin’s 

experimentation beyond the tensions of competing structures as with the post office, to explore 

conflict between spiritual and humanistic symbolism. The top half of the frame is a religious 

tableau saturated with Christian symbolism. There is a framed likeness of Jesus Christ whose 

hands appear open and welcoming. Affixed to the image is a drawing of a bunny carrying some 

eggs, which suggests perhaps the photograph was made around Easter. Hanging next to the 

painting of Christ is a painting of the Virgin Marry that appears to be wrapped in some type of 

crinkled plastic. Stars, flowers and other decorations hang from the frame embellishing the 

image of the infantless Madonna. The photograph is balanced on the bottom half of the frame  

 

209 

Figure 91. Untitled, Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. 

 

 

210 

Figure 92. “The Family, Luzzara, Italy,” Paul Strand, 1953. 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

211 

with items symbolic of cultural humanism. A crocheted cloth adorns a small table, which 

anchors the photograph. Sitting on the table, the viewer sees a tin of Bugler Turkish blend 

cigarette tobacco next to a box-style record player with the turntable folded down. In front of the 

turntable a record album can be seen, which given the apparent piety of the family, could 

possibly be filled with gospel albums. On top of the record player sits a hinged frame; the 

opening on the left houses another image of Christ, and on the right a photograph of a woman 

who appears to be middle aged. Rogovin’s composition relies upon the cultural and 

technological imagery of the folk-art tablecloth, the record player and the tobacco to create 

tensions with the religious imagery positioned above. This tension exists as the physical plane 

breaches the spiritual one; stuck in between these two planes, a shirtless boy sits awkwardly 

looking as though he not quite sure what he is supposed to be doing. Rogovin’s photograph of 

the boy exploits an unbalanced dynamic of power between photographer and subject not found in 

his more collaborative portraiture. Both the photograph of the boy and the photograph of the post 

office depart from Rogovin’s early diptych style of portraiture. This departure reveals both a 

maturing artist displaying the confidence to experiment, but also the influence other 

photographers and individuals have on his work.  

Conditions shown in Rogovin’s early Appalachia photographs were isolated and 

sporadic, at odds with the conditions that existed throughout most of West Virginia, which was 

still flourishing economically from heavy coal production. In a 1969 letter, West Virginia civil 

rights activist Genne Kuhn is supportive and complimentary of Rogovin’s work; however, she 

attempts to manage his expectations as to what he would find upon arrival. She writes: “As you  

 

212 

might not know, most miners today live in modern, and well kept up homes. As we worked in 

Mannington last January, we noticed that the miners spent a good deal of their money on repairs, 

painting, modernization of their houses. It was a pleasure to see the effort they had to extend.”291 

In the mid- to late-1970s and throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Rogovin’s interest in miners 

expanded beyond Appalachia. Funded in part by a 1983 fellowship from the W. Eugene Smith 

Memorial Fund, his celebrated Family of Miners series took him to Scotland, Germany, China,  

Mexico, Zimbabwe, Spain, Cuba and Czechoslovakia to make his signature diptych portraits of 

miners. Photographs he made in Appalachia for this series abandoned his early vision of poverty 

to return to his signature aesthetic of the individuality of the American worker. Rogovin’s 

portraits of miners in Appalachia fit seamlessly with his portraits of miners from Central 

America, Asia, Africa and Europe, suggesting that mining possesses a universal aesthetic, with 

one important carveout. Many of Rogovin’s portraits of European miners show them only 

partially dressed, or completely naked, while at work in the mine. It was customary for miners to 

work naked or nearly naked because in many cases mines were not adequately ventilated. 

making temperatures unbearable for wearing clothes.292  

Despite similar working conditions, U.S. miners did not share in that tradition; even 

immigrants who had worked in mines in their native lands abandoned the custom to assimilate 

into social norms. Examine two portraits, one made of a miner in Appalachia (Figure 93) and the 

other of a miner in Czechoslovakia (Figure 94), as an example of this contrast in mining 

tradition. Both photographs focus primarily on the miners’ torsos in a similar stance slightly 

turned away from the camera. The miners share the same expression, are in the same industrial 

setting, and are covered by the same soot; but the Czech miner is bare-chested with his pants  

291 Kuhn, 1969 
292 Orwell, 1937 

 

 

213 

Figure 93. Appalachian miner from “Family of Miners” series. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. 

 

 

214 

Figure 94. Czechoslovakian miner from “Family of Miners” series. Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. 

 

 

 

 

215 

undone, suggesting a relative modesty in the American counterpart. The modesty of the U.S. 

miner by comparison to miners in other countries in Rogovin’s series underscores the country’s 

Puritan heritage.293,294,295 

ACCESS AND INTIMACY: DEVELOPING SUBJECT RELATIONSHIPS 

 

 

Both Corn and Rogovin were outsiders when they began photographing miners in 

Appalachia. By chance of assignment, Corn first visited Appalachia in 1956 while working at 

The Tennessean, but developed an affinity, passion and deep respect for the people of the Clear 

Fork Valley. In the documentary “Picture Man,” Rogovin said he was drawn to photograph 

miners after reading news coverage of the struggles of coal communities in Appalachia in 

1962—coverage to which Corn and others at The Tennessean contributed. To gain access, both 

outsiders relied on the help of insiders to make arrangements and introductions for them. In the 

1930s and ’40s, Rogovin’s practice as an optometrist catered to the working-class laborers in the 

steel mills and stamping plants of South Buffalo. Through photography and his political 

activism, he began to develop strong relationships with labor organizers and union leaders in the 

Buffalo area, which led to him beginning his highly celebrated “Lower West Side” series 

celebrating laborers.296 It was through union officials that he began getting access to local mines 

and miners in West Virginia. In the case of Beckley, West Virginia, Rogovin enlisted the help of 

a local physician, Dr. Donald Rasmussen, who was researching links between black lung disease 

and coal dust to gain access to the community.297 In Kentucky, Rogovin forged a relationship 

 

293 Kangasluoma, 2018 
294 O’Brien, 1996 
295 Foster, 1981 
296 Herzog, 2006 
297 Herzog, 2006 

 

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with Caudill, who used some of his mining photographs in the 1971 book My Land is Dying. 

Using local contacts, Rogovin and his wife Anne would spend a week or two each summer 

between 1962 and 1971 photographing miners and Appalachia. In addition to local contacts, 

Rogovin sometimes used poetry to connect with his subjects; writing poems himself or asking 

his subjects to write poems to give voice to the portraits he had made of them.298 For example, 

Rogovin wrote the poem My Theme Boy about a photograph (Figure 95) he made during his first 

visit to Appalachia in 1962. The poem lyrically reinforces the most striking aspect of the 

photograph—the boy’s haunting gaze—and expresses the sense of longing the photograph 

evokes. 

You can see it 
 

in his eyes 

This too is in his eyes 

His land is dying 
 
 
The mines are closing 
 
Look into his eyes 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

They will tell you lots – lots more 
 
 
 
Remember America 
 
 
 
 
 

This should be 
This must be 
 
 
 

Of mountain tops – stripped and gouged 
Of streams polluted 
Of fish destroyed 

The land of opportunity and equality 
 
 

for all 
Including this little boy 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

298 Herzog, 2006: 60 

 

 

217 

Figure 95. “Appalachian Boy,” Milton Rogovin, 1962–1987. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

218 

Through reporting for The Tennessean, Corn also developed relationships with insiders 

that helped him gain access to the subjects he photographed. After reporting on the reunion of a 

boy, Charles Reagan, with his parents in Fentress County, Corn was introduced to Louise 

Adams, post mistress of the Clairfield, Tennessee post office and Sister Marie Carrillo of Fatima 

of the Glenmary Sisters, who was doing missionary work in the Clear Fork Valley through the 

Catholic Diocese of Knoxville. Over the course of two decades, Adams and Carrillo would 

become Corn’s gateway to Appalachia and his close personal friends. For example, it was 

Adams who sent Corn and Kovach to meet with the Marlowe family, and Cirillo showed Corn 

around the valley’s crumbling schools and medical facilities. Being an outsider, Corn doubts he 

would have gotten the access and made the images he did in Appalachia without Adams and 

Carrillo. For example, Corn recalls needing Adams’ help in arranging introductions for a story in 

1964. Corn and reporter Gene Graham headed to the valley after receiving a call from the 

Associated Women’s Club of Tennessee that there was group of school children in Crawford 

walking to school every day barefoot. Corn writes: “Louise had warned me that the people did 

not like the press, after a Knoxville journalist had done a story on Clairfield, and called one 

woman a toothless old crone.”299 The woman was the county’s midwife and a local hero after she 

had crawled into a mine to give medical attention to Ed Marlowe after the roof collapsed on 

him—the Knoxville article was referring to the same disaster Corn had covered the year before. 

“The reporter had written a colorful story without sympathy for their wretched condition. The 

local people were furious at his description.”300  

Though Corn began in 1956 as an outsider, a strong argument can be made that over the 

course of nearly three decades, he gradually became seen by at least some in the Clear Fork 

299 Corn, 2000 
300 Corn, 2000 

 

 

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Valley as an insider. With the help of Cirillo and Adams, Corn used his devout faith, his status as 

a veteran, and his upbringing as a fellow Tennessean to find commonality with his subjects in the 

Clear Fork Valley, many of whom he developed long friendships with, visiting them year after 

year. Corn said the underlying principle to his approach was respect, writing: “I wanted a 

photograph that would be honest, not posed and to never strip the dignity from my subjects. I 

tried to develop empathy with the person being photographed which was sometimes difficult.”301 

That the world came to know the story of the Marlowe family is as much a product of 

Adams’ actions as they are Corn’s photographs. Adams was a gatekeeper and allowed Corn to 

show the world the Clear Fork Valley she wanted them to see. Cirillo said that Adams’ power 

and authority stemmed from her position in the community. Being postmaster, she knew 

everyone, knew their relationships to one another and their place within the politics of coal. 

Intimidation and coercion through the threat of violence was a common tactic used by coal 

companies and coal supporters to arrive at favorable outcomes. Corn said that violence was 

always just below the surface in the Clear Fork Valley.302,303 There was the violence inherent to 

the processes of removing material that had been undisturbed under the Earth’s surface for tens 

of millions of years, and the violence associated with ensuring that those processes proceed 

unimpeded. Cirillo said there were a number of occasions when coal companies, or other vested 

parties, would send people to scare her into backing down from initiatives that may interfere with 

mining operations.304  

One initiative was founding a land trust to preserve the little unleased land that remained 

in Claiborne County for the people of the valley. When the trust began buying parcels of land in 

301 Corn, 2000: 4 
302 Corn, 2000 
303 Corn, 2019 
304 Cirillo, 2019 

 

 

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the valley, she said rocks were thrown through the windows of her house, and someone 

attempted to burn it down.305 Despite the widespread tactics of intimidation, Cirillo said “no one 

messed with Louise.”306 As postmaster, Adams was a federal employee, and any threats against 

her would involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), rather than local law enforcement 

officers who were often sympathetic to the coal companies. Adams wielded her power and 

influence in advocacy of the people of the valley. She worked closely with Cirillo on the Model 

Valley Project and other initiatives and was instrumental to Corn’s picture-making activities in 

the region. She arranged for local guides to drive Corn around and introduced him to the 

Marlowe’s, the Huddleston’s, the Miller children, the Teague’s, and Cirillo; she suggested he 

visit schools in Clairfield and Buffalo Creek; and called him with news tips when issues or 

events where happening in the valley. Many, if not most, of the images Corn selected as being 

the most important of his work in Appalachia are the result, in some way, of Adams’ 

involvement as a gatekeeper. 

AUDIENCE AND MEANING: UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCE IN THE SITE OF 
CIRCULATION 

 

On Sept. 14, 1972, the first exhibition of photographs from Rogovin’s Appalachia series 

opened at the Center Lounge Gallery at the State University of New York, Buffalo (Figure 96). 

That year, Caudill published My Land is Dying—a dystopian follow-up to Night Comes to the 

Cumberland —which featured two of Rogovin’s photographs as a frontispiece. The first 

photograph uses the full bleed of the 6 ¼ x 8 ½ -inch page to the left of the title page. Like one of 

305 Cirillo, 2019 
306 Cirillo, 2019 

 

 

221 

Corn’s aerial strip-mining photographs (Figure 97), Rogovin’s image (Figure 98) shows a 

landscape carved of roads and trenches winding from foreground to background. Viewed  

together the two images appear to be a reverse of one another, as though the contours of one 

could fit in the other if turned upside down. In Corn’s photograph the destruction rises up from 

the bottom of the frame, as the areas of strip-mining steps up the side of the mountain to the 

summit. The movement in Rogovin’s photograph is the reversed of the movement in Corn’s—it 

is anchored at the top of the frame, with areas of strip-mining cascading down the side of the 

mountain into a deep trench that effectively cuts the photograph in half. Though not intentional, 

the contrast between the two photographs symbolically speaks to the contrast between the two 

photographers themselves and their approach to social documentary—they are as complementary 

as they are different. Both images speak to Caudill’s bleak outlook of the future. In My Land Is 

Dying Caudill warns that “the coming devastation of the rest of the continent—the creation of an 

American Carthage, plowed and salted—as millions of acres in the Mid- and Far  

West […] fall before the blades of giant earth-destroying machines.”307 

The other photograph (Figure 99), smaller in comparison, measures 2 ¾ x 2 ¾ inches. In 

a similar sparse and straightforward arrangement as the “theme boy” portrait, the photograph 

shows a child sitting barefoot and shirtless on a ragged couch on a porch. On the page to the right 

of the photograph is a dedication that reads: “That they may know some cared, this book is 

dedicated to all those unborn millions who must someday inhabit America’s spoil banks.”308 

Rogovin saw himself as purely an artist, an informant to the activist and intellectual elite who 

visited the galleries and read the books that contained his images. He viewed the art exhibition as 

the primary showcase of his work as he explained in one letter dated May 3, 1969 to a local  

307 Caudill, 1972 
308 Caudill, 1972 

 

 

222 

Figure 96. Gallery Exhibit Preview Invitation. Milton Rogovin’s “Appalachia,” Sept. 30, 1972. 

 

 

223 

Figure 97. Aerial of strip-mined mountain in Campbell Co., TN. Jack Corn, ca. 1969. 

 

 

 

224 

Figure 98. Untitled  from “My Land is Dying.” Milton Rogovin, 1972. 

 

 

 

225 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 99. Untitled  from “My Land is Dying.” Milton Rogovin, 1972. 

 

226 

contact, Lela Holcomb of Webster Springs, West Virginia, eliciting her help with introductions. 

Rogovin writes: “I feel certain that the people would welcome us once they see the unusual 

quality of my work. The photographs are done primarily for museum exhibits and not for any 

newspapers or magazines.”309 When Rogovin’s work does appear in periodicals it is to promote 

an upcoming exhibition or published as a portfolio, not accompanying editorial content, as in 

Aperture, or Laborer’s Heritage magazine.  

Rogovin’s vision of himself as purely an artist, contrasts with Corn’s idealism of 

journalists being agents of social change. Rogovin’s documentary, although thought-provoking 

and conceptual, is not accompanied by any real call to action. Corn, however, thought through 

reporting he was directly helping to illuminate the issues facing miners, their families and the 

community. As a staff photojournalist, Corn’s assigned work, which varied from human interest 

features, to spot news, to sports was published daily in The Tennessean, and distributed over wire  

services such as the Associated Press, and United Press International. His work in Appalachia 

accompanied news stories, or as a part of special coverage, such as the strip-mining supplement, 

or breaking news of the mine collapse at the C. L. Kline mine in Scott County, Tennessee.  

On May 25, 1965 miners were trapped 3,000 feet below the surface of Brimstone 

Mountain when coal dust combined with a pocket of methane gas released from digging ignited 

and caused an explosion. In the dramatic lede of the story reporter John Hemphill writes: 

“BRIMSTONE COMMUNITY, Tenn.—Weary, coal-blackened rescue workers located last 

night the bodies of the last three victims of Monday’s mine explosion here.”310 The Tennessean 

dedicated most of the Wednesday, May 26, 1965 front page to the accident (Figure 100). In two 

separate stories, accompanied by three photographs, Hemphill, in almost lyrical prose, describes  

309 Rogovin, 1969 
310 Hemphill, 1965 

 

 

227 

Figure 100. Front page of Wednesday, May 26, 1965, The Tennessean newspaper, Nashville, TN. 

 

 

228 

in vivid detail and texture the scene unfolding at the mine just outside the town of Oneida in 

northeast Tennessee. He writes: “The crowd was silent, but lightning flashed, and thunder 

rumbled ominously through the hills as the bodies, completely wrapped in white sheeting, were 

carried across the mine yard to waiting ambulances.” What Hemphill’s language is doing, is 

taking readers to that place. He relies on imagery familiar to those living in coal producing 

regions such as of soot covered miners emerging from beneath the Earth, to illicit an emotional 

response from his readers. On covering the event Corn wrote: “It rained a hard  

Tennessee, month-of-May rain that soaked everything and everyone.”311 

Corn’s photographs of the event capture the emotion of the people involved with the 

rescue. One photograph (Figure 101) shows the furrowed brow of a miner in profile, his hand 

pressed firmly against his cheek watching the rescue of his co-workers. Corn uses a tight frame 

and dark background to not allow the viewer’s attention to focus on anything but the intensity of 

the miner’s chiseled gaze. Another photograph (Figure 102) shows another aspect of the 

recovery effort and Corn’s skillful use of composition. Again, in this photograph Corn 

demonstrates his mastery of implied movement through geometry and the aesthetically pleasing 

triangle. The viewer’s eye naturally moves across, down and back up the frame, following the 

implied line of the subject’s gaze. Beginning with the left, the attention moves across the father’s 

piercing stare to Scott County Sherriff Jack Laxton who is staring down as he attempts to 

resuscitate unconscious rescue worker Edker Hunnicutt, who if his eyes were open, would be 

staring back up at his father. Corn’s use of implied lines to create motion also create intensity 

and intimacy in this powerful image. 

 

 

311 Corn, 2000 

 

 

229 

Figure 101. “East Tennessee miner,” Jack Corn, 1965. 

230 

 

 

Figure 102. Sheriff Jack Laxton administers oxygen to rescue worker Edker Hunnicutt. Jack Corn, 1965. 

 

 

 

231 

Though they were distributed widely via the circulation of The Tennessean, Corn also 

believed the photographs he made belonged in the places he made them. He developed a habit of 

making prints and delivering them to his subjects whenever he would visit the area. To this day, 

43 framed and signed prints Corn made in the valley hang on display at Clear Fork Community 

Institute in Eagan, Tennessee. Looking at the photographs in the institute’s entrance hall (Figure 

103) Cirilo suggests that the people were appreciative that they were portrayed fairly, with 

respect and dignity and that Corn brought the images back to where they were made.312 Corn’s 

Appalachia photographs were also the subject of two major exhibitions. In 1969, “The Valley of 

Despair” exhibition ran from Feb. 2–23, at the Parthenon in Nashville. In an article previewing 

the one-man show, The Tennessean art critic Clara Hieronymus writes: “the pictures are both a 

loving and chilling look at the current decade in a strip of Tennessee forming a broad band 

across the upper part of the state […] If the sequence of photos, which could be called “The Life 

and Death of a People and Mountain,” speaks quietly of desolation, it also makes a case for 

dignity and goodness.”313 Corn’s photographs were also the subject of a 2015 “Picturing our 

World” exhibit at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. 

The exhibit consisted of images from materials Corn donated to the library in 2012. Of the 

significance of Corn’s images to Tennessee history, Vanderbilt University Provost Richard 

McCarty wrote: “Jack Corn’s exceptional talents and insights bring to light the lives of those 

miners whose hard work heated our homes, even while their families paid a terrible price. […] 

These dramatic images tell the story more clearly than any text I could imagine.”314  

 

312 Cirillo, 2019 
313 Hieronymus, 1969 
314 McCarty, 2012 

 

232 

 

Figure 103. Marie Cirillo looks at Jack Corn’s framed photographs of the Clear Fork Valley on display at the Clear Fork 

Community Institute. Eagan, TN. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

233 

Both Rogovin and Corn’s photographs are important historical records of the social and 

physical sacrifice coal miners made for the good of society, capitalism and national progress. But  

they are also documentation of the destruction mining has on the physical world and social fabric 

of community. Both photographers entered these areas of Tennessee, Kentucky and West 

Virginia with idealized visions of what would be found and what should be documented. But 

being in these places, acquiring the knowledge they did through the people they met, and the 

materials they collected and consumed changed both of their perspectives. Rogovin went to West 

Virginia expecting to find systemic, wide-spread poverty, fulfilling an idealized vision of the 

poor down-trodden miner aesthetic. He did encounter miners out of work, and communities left 

behind after mines closed; however, local contacts helped him re-imagine the coal miner as a 

working-class laborer living in modern houses, with modern conveniences. This re-positioning is 

an important contribution to the visual discourse of mining; Rogovin’s portraits celebrated the 

worker rather than the work. Similarly, Corn was outraged by the injustice of poverty and began 

photographing life in Appalachian coal communities to bring attention to the issues the region 

faced. Through the contacts he cultivated and subjects he photographed, Corn came to realize 

that while the coal companies stripped the Clear Fork Valley of land, natural resources and the 

revered beauty of the mountains, they could not strip the people of their spirit, or proud heritage. 

While at first Corn may have pitied those living in the valley, advocates like Adams and Cirillo 

commanded his respect and showed him how change was possible from within. The images 

these two photographers produced, and the indelible mark they make on history, would not have 

been possible had two outsiders just shown up and started making pictures. Both researched the 

issues and culture of the people they photographed and relied upon the help of locals to gain  

 

234 

access to these often-reluctant and guarded communities. As much as the vision and eye of the 

photographer, the willing participation of insiders like Rasmussen, Adams and Cirillo helped 

shape what these images represent.

 

235 

“…we have recklessly plundered our continent, raiding it for beaver, for buffalo, 
for timber, for gold, for grass, laying waste to forests and hillsides and river valleys  

without regard for the needs of future generations.”  

—  Stewart L. Udall, 1962 

 

 

 
 

 

VISUALIZING THE ENVIRONMENT: THE EPA’S DOCUMERICA AND THE LASTING 

LEGACY OF A PROJECT THAT FAILED TO LIVE UP TO ITS PROMISE 

CHAPTER 7 

 
 

Stewart L. Udall wrote this passage while serving as secretary of the Department of 

Interior during the administration of President John F. Kennedy. The passage is from a forward 

Udall penned for historian and environmentalist Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the 

Cumberlands, a century-long look at exploitation and degradation of the people and land on the 

Cumberland Plateau in southeast Kentucky. Udall was an outspoken activist and frustration often 

manifests in writing. The frustration stemmed in part from being the head of an agency that 

oversaw the nation’s natural resources at a time when federal oversight was piecemeal and 

ineffective at enforcing environmental laws. During this time, most of the actual power for 

regulation and enforcement of issues related to industry and the environment resided with 

individual states that often placed economic interests over environmental concern. In The Quiet 

Crisis, a 1963 call for social intervention, Udall warns of a disappearing quality of American life. 

He writes: “America today stands poised on a pinnacle of power, and yet we live in a land of 

vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an overall environment 

that is diminished by pollution and noise and blight.”315 Night Comes to the Cumberlands, along 

with biologist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, helped illuminate what Udall warned against. 

Both books, published in 1962, document the devastation a century of unchecked 

industrialization and globalization was having on the quality of air, water, soil, plants, wildlife 

315 Udall, 1963: viii 

 

 

236 

and on human health and wellbeing. Silent Spring in particular, which examines the erosive and 

toxic effect of prolonged large-scale pesticide use in agriculture, attracted widespread attention—

requiring six printings in its first year of release—and has been attributed as being the spark to 

ignite the environmental movement. Of Silent Spring, Udall writes: “A great woman has 

awakened the Nation by her forceful account of the dangers around us.”316  

The decade following this awakening saw rise to a tremendous force of activism centered 

around demands for political, environmental and social change. It was the era of the Vietnam 

War, the civil rights and women’s rights movements. Enmeshed in these social forces was a 

rapidly growing concern for the denigrated state of the environment. Historian Adam Rome 

opines that too often environmentalism gets lost in the decade and becomes a footnote to 

histories of 1960s activism. He argues that anti-war activism, civil rights, women’s rights and 

environmentalism are all intrinsically connected and cannot easily be parsed out from one 

another.317 As scant as histories are of environmentalism in the 1950s and 60s, even less has been 

written about the connection between journalism and the environment in this period. The 

movements of the 1960s grew and gained power, in part, through press coverage of policy 

debates, political campaigning, protests and demonstrations with activist organizations such as 

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), League of Women Voters, Women Strike for Peace, 

Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, as well as the formation of local and regional grassroots groups 

such as the Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning (TCWP) and Save Our Cumberland 

Mountains (SOCM)—all advancing social and environmental agendas via the press. The 

following discussion examines the role of the U.S. news media and the illustrative power of 

photography leading up to and during the emergence of the 1960s activist culture. This 

316 Udall in the accolade’s material of Silent Spring’s 1964 printing under the Crest Book imprint 
317 Rome, 2003 

 

 

237 

discussion will examine two distinct cultural themes: the rise of a new liberal ideology amidst 

post-World War II American prosperity and a rising skepticism of purely objective journalism in 

an increasingly complex world. These two themes, like the articulating hands on a watch, came 

into alignment in the 1960s amidst the spreading of environmental awareness and activism in a 

tumultuous decade of unrest.  

This chapter examines the U.S. government-sanctioned work of Corn. His independent 

and newspaper work will be compared and contrasted to his work on Documerica and the 

President’s Report on the Coal Industry, highlighting differences in intimacy and aesthetic he 

was able to achieve. Discussion around Documerica and other photographic surveys is aimed at 

building the argument that Corn and Milton Rogovin were approaching documentation of 

Appalachia from an environmental perspective long before the launch of the project. This 

argument repositions their work as being significant environmental documents before 

environmentalism entered the public discourse.  

 
THE DAWN OF A NEW DECADE, AND DAWN OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL ERA  

On January 1, 1970 with a handful of politicians, reporters and photographers looking on, 

U.S. President Richard Nixon signed (Figure 104) the National Environmental Policy Act 

(NEPA). The first official act of the new decade aimed to establish a set of national 

environmental policies. The key goals of these policies were to, among other things, foster 

efforts to prevent and repair damage already done to the atmosphere and the environment and 

build understanding of ecological systems and natural resources “important to the nation.”318  

318 Lewis, 1985: 2 

 

 

238 

 

Figure 104. U.S. President Richard Nixon (left) after signing the National Environmental Policy Act, Jan. 1, 1970.  

Photographer Unknown, Richard Nixon Library. 

 

NEPA consolidated environmental regulatory functions previously spread across multiple offices 

and agencies, into one new cabinet level authority. This new agency would set federal 

regulations and oversee state compliance over their enforcement. Nearly a year after NEPA was 

signed, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was formed; placed at its helm was a state 

environmental regulator from Indiana, William D. Ruckelshaus.  

Philosophically, the environment was not a priority for Nixon, or even an issue.319,320 He 

was skeptical of the environmental movement and believed it to be just a tentacle of the emphatic 

anti-war movement. Setting Nixon’s disdain aside, the two movements were connected, both in 

terms of an underlying social anxiety and especially around the environmental impacts of the 

Vietnam War. EPA historian Jack Lewis notes that anti-war and environmental activism 

 

319 Rome, 2006 
320 Ruckelshaus, 1993 

 

239 

coalesced around defoliation campaigns of the U.S. military in the jungles of Indochina.321 Rome 

suggests that many Americans came to believe the war and corporate exploitation of the 

environment were all part of the same profiteering mechanism of global capitalism. He writes: 

“In Vietnam, Americans destroyed towns to ‘save’ them; at home, Americans degraded the 

environment to make ‘progress.’”322 When people became aware of the tactics “they became 

more receptive to the ‘environmental’ ideas advanced by Carson and her countless imitators.”323 

In a 1993 oral history, Ruckelshaus recalls Nixon frequently warning him of the environmental 

“crazies” within the agency and to “not get pushed around by them.”324 Nixon did not share the 

concern over environmental issues felt by a growing number of Americans at the time, but 

politically, taking action was a necessity. “He never once asked me ‘is there anything wrong with 

the environment? Is the air really bad? Is it hurting people?’”325 Ruckelshaus said the EPA was 

created “because of public outrage about what was happening to the environment. Not because 

Nixon shared that concern, but because he didn’t have any choice.”326  

Ruckelshaus served as counsel to the Indiana Stream Pollution Control Board and the 

State Board of Health in the 1950s and 60s and recalls that unless there was a significant public 

demand, there was a complete lack of appetite to address any environmental issues. This was not 

just the case in Indiana, but in many other heavily industrial states as well. In West Virginia, for 

example, where most of the state’s economy was tied to the extraction and transportation of coal, 

the public’s opinion of environmental issues was and continues to be especially complex. 

Environmental sociologist Aysha Bodenhamer suggests that many West Virginians and those 

 

321 Lewis, 1985: 1 
322 Rome, 2006: 547 
323 Lewis, 1985: 1 
324 Ruckelshaus, 1993: 11 
325 Ruckelshaus, 1993: 11 
326 Ruckelshaus, 1993: 11 

 

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living across Appalachia “face competing identities—one marked by loyalty to the coal industry 

and the other signified by an attachment to place.”327 On weighing issues of economic prosperity 

versus destruction of natural places, Ruckelshaus asserts that “public opinion remains absolutely 

essential for anything to be done on the behalf of the environment. Absent that, nothing will 

happen because the forces of the economy and the impact on the people’s livelihood are so much 

more automatic and endemic.”328 The fight over the public’s perception of environmental issues 

had been playing out in the U.S. press since the turn of the 20th century. The entire public 

relations industry was born out of a need to persuade the public that meeting the interest of 

industry over social concerns was essential for economic prosperity. 

 VISUALITIES AND NATURE: THE AESTHETIC OF ENVIRONMENTALISM 

Sensing the American malaise of the 1950s and fearing it would lead to a neo-liberal era 

of environmental regulation, a group of executives got together to form Keep America Beautiful 

(KAB); an organization to promote proactive environmental stewardship messages aimed at 

absolving them from culpability for pollution.329 Packagers such as Phillip-Morris Tobacco and 

bottlers such as Coca-a-Cola, PepsiCo, and Anheuser-Busch funded KAB to promote the idea 

that the problem of littering was caused by consumer action, not corporate production.330 In the 

1960s KAB approached the Ad Council for help to produce its anti-littering campaigns. The Ad 

Council is a trade association of advertising agencies that produce pro-bono public service 

announcements (PSAs) for non-profit governmental causes, such as the anti-communist “Future 

of America” and “The People’s Capitalism” campaigns in the 1950s. The group is responsible 

 

327 Bodenhamer, 2016: 1140 
328 Ruckelshaus, 1993: 7 
329 Lamb, 2001 
330 Beder, 2000 

 

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for creating some of the most memorable call to action messages of the 20th century, including 

the lines “only you can prevent forest fires,” “friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” and “a mind 

is a terrible thing to waste” as well as iconic characters such as Smokey Bear and McGruff the 

Crime Dog.331 The result of KAB and the Ad Council’s partnership was the “Every Litter Bit 

Hurts” campaign, which included the infamous “Crying Indian” PSA.332 

First aired on Earth Day in 1971, the PSA begins with dramatic opening music—loud 

drumbeats as a Native American man is seen paddling his birch bark canoe down a river. The 

water is pristine as the man passes by factories briefly seen in the background (Figure 105). 

Finally, he arrives at the riverbank and steps out of his canoe to trash littering the shore. The 

setting transitions to an urban environment and a paper bag can be seen flung from the open 

window of a car as it passes by. The bag explodes against the pavement as it lands at the man’s 

feet; the PSA ends with a tightening zoom shot of the man’s face, with a tear running down his 

check and the narrator saying, “people start pollution, and people can stop it.” One can see 

similar vilification of material consumption over industrial production mirrored in contemporary 

contexts, with attempts at public shaming over the use of plastic straws, or one-time use plastic 

bags. The imagery here fights against the notion that Galbraith lays out in The Affluent Society—

that capitalistic production was leading to the de-beautification of the landscape. In countering 

that notion, what the PSA accomplishes is the construction of a new relationship to place, a 

“posited state of affairs, a particular universe of objects and events.”333 In this universe, as in The 

Affluent Society, the foundation of environmentalism is based on a visual esthetic of beauty; 

however, changes to that beauty are the result of the carelessness of individuals, not  

 

331 Strand, 2009  
332 Ad Council, 2020 
333 Basso, 1996 

 

242 

 

 

 

 

Figure 105. Screenshots of the Keep American Beautiful, 1971 Public Service Announcement campaign. 

 

 

 

 

Figure 106. 71 things you can do to stop pollution brochure produced by Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council, 1971. 

243 

  

  

 

 

corporations. What the PSA does is pivot the onus for a clean environment to consumers not 

corporations. Other materials produced such as the “71 things you can do to fight pollution” 

(Figure 106) brochure reinforce the notion of individual responsibility that is central to the 

campaign’s message. While critical of the PSA, writer and activist Ginger Strand writes of the 

PSA’s enduring legacy: “The crying Indian wept for our sins, and from his tears sprang forth a 

new Green Age.”334 It is the inherent deception of the PSA, not the sentiment, however, that has 

made it the target of criticism. Revelations that the man in the PSA was actually an Italian-

American actor named Iron Eyes Cody, not a Native American, sparked outrage in 

environmental circles; as did knowledge that KAB was a corporate trade organization, not the 

environmental advocacy group it purported to be.335,336,337 Despite heavy criticism in the decades 

since it aired, the PSA has been touted as one of the most memorable commercials and effective 

PSAs of all time.338 

Reinforcing the role of gaze and materiality in environmental visualization, the landscape 

made visually unappealing through littering, is gazed upon by the Native American man and he 

weeps beholding the beauty that is lost as discarded materials, evidence of a rapidly growing 

consumerism, litter the landscape. This objectification of place has skewed the environment as a 

place and corrupted its inhabitability in social imaginary. Tying environmentalism so closely to 

natural aesthetics set in motion a narrative that 30 years later society is still grappling with how 

to approach and occupy. It is through this linkage of environment and aesthetic beauty that has 

made it difficult to unlink notions of nature as being the sole domain of “the Environment.” The 

 

334 Strand, 2008: 2 
335 Strand, 2008  
336 Lamb, 2001 
337 Beder, 2000 
338 Cialdini, 2001: 280 

 

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environment is removed from being the space we inhabit, placing it in some other realm 

removed from our locality. In other words, in the context of environmental issues we think of the 

environment as existing somewhere other than where we physically are located in the present.339 

Other environmental campaigns of the past half century have contributed to this dissociative 

work. “Save the rainforest,” “save the trees,” “save the whales,” all objectify and materialize 

personified symbols that remove the environment from where we are spatially, creating almost 

an othering effect of place. It disassociates the environment as being omnipresent and existing 

where people live, creating a visual diaspora of the environment existing almost exclusively in 

the domain of nature. 

RESURRECTION OF THE GOVERNMENT PHOTGRAPHIC SURVEY: DOCUMERICA 

Realizing the power of images in showing environmental decay, the EPA launched a 

massive photographic survey project called Documerica to “pictorially document the 

environmental movement in America and create a visual baseline of images from which the 

environment could be measured.”340 Project director Gifford Hampshire, a former National 

Geographic photo editor, hired 100 freelance photographers who produced more than 81,000 

photographs between 1971 and 1977 depicting all manner of environmental phenomena from the 

effects of acid rain and smog to the erosion of beaches. Corn was one of those photographers. He 

used the project to continue his work of documenting the effects of mining on the people and 

lands of Appalachia. 

339 Basso, 1996 
340 Berman and Cronin, 2018: 187 

 

 

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In his assignment proposal to the EPA (Figure 107), Corn emphasizes the large body of work he 

had already produced related to coal miners in Tennessee, and the relationships already 

established in mining communities. He writes:  

“I propose to compile a photographic record of the coal industry today, with the same 
emphasis on people—the miners, their families and their communities—that 
characterized the excellent work done during the 30s by the Farm Security 
Administration. […] I think I have one of the best collections of black and white 
photographs of this region in the entire country. I look forward to a chance to share 
knowledge of these people, people I have come to know and admire, with the rest of the 
United States.” 341  
 

Corn acknowledges the importance of coal as a vital source of energy while emphasizing that the 

environmental damage done by the industry was undeniable. He proposed photographing at sites 

in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. He estimated it would take 20 days to photograph 

the assignment, and his Documerica contract indicates he was paid $150 a day for shooting. 

Photographers were provided with some resources from the EPA such as branded notebooks for 

recordkeeping (Figure 108). They were however, expected to provide their own equipment and  

materials such as film and do their own processing, for which they were paid an additional $75 

per day for assignment administration.342 Corn’s project invoice indicates that in total, he was  

paid $4,675 for his work on Documerica.343 The official description of his assignment from 

Hampshire reads: 

Photographer will document the coal mining industry in western Kentucky and West 
Virginia. Emphasis will be on long wall and other progressive industrial developments 
for obtaining coal from deep mining operations efficiently, economically, and with due 
regard for industrial health and safety. Photographer will also document the lifestyles of 
miners emphasizing standards of living possible and typical of present wage-work 
standards. By contrast, photographer will document physical and social effects on miners 
due to past mining practices. Photographer will work with industry management (ie: 
Island Creek Coal Co.) and labor representatives (ie: United Mine Workers) and strive for  
 

 

341 Corn, 1974 
342 Documerica Contract, 1974 
343 Documerica Invoice, 1974 

 

246 

Figure 107. Jack Corn’s 1973 proposal for the Documerica project. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

 

247 

Figure 108. Jack Corn’s 1974 assignment notes on branded Documerica notebook. Anthony Cepak, 2019. 

 

 

248 

objective documentation of above. This task will be carried out in keeping with the 
photographer’s proposal of March 16, 1974.344 

 

While Corn achieved a remarkable level of intimacy in his photographs of miners and 

their families in the Clear Fork Valley for The Tennessean, his work on Documerica is far less 

personal and more evidentiary than it is emotional. Many factors contribute to this contrast in his 

own work, including specifications of the project itself. All of Corn’s independent work and 

work for The Tennessean was shot in black and white, while Documerica required the use of 

color film to capture the true nature of pollution. This causes an immediate departure from the 

FSA aesthetic Corn mentioned in his assignment proposal, an aesthetic he was able to achieve in 

his other Appalachia work. Other major factors were location and time. For Documerica Corn 

ventured out of his familiarity with Tennessee up to West Virginia, centering on the town of 

Rhodell. Once again, Corn found himself an outsider in an Appalachian coal community but 

lacked the time in West Virginia to build rapport. He shot the entirety of his Documerica 

assignment during a three-week extended vacation from The Tennessean in the summer of 1974. 

Corn recalls a similar struggle in gaining accesses in West Virginia that he did initially in the 

Clear Fork Valley. He recalls the difference he found between doing newspaper work and the 

suspicion he was met with while working on Documerica: “They understand when you say 

you’re from a newspaper, but they don’t understand [a photographer] working for the 

government.”345  

Aesthetic difference between Corn’s independent and newspaper work compared to his 

Documerica work can been seen by studying two pairs of photographs of comparable scenes. 

Corn’s 1969 photograph (Figure 109) of Ed Marlowe resting at home in bed has a more  

344 Documerica contract, 1974 
345 Corn quoted in Parkinson, 2013 

 

 

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Figure 109. Ed Marlowe crippled in a coal mine roof fall stares out his window. Portrait of President John Kennedy 

 in chair. Jack Corn, 1969. 

 

Figure 110. Ken Hatfield, 74, of Newton, West Virginia, near Charleston, in Mingo County. A World War II Veteran, He Began 
Working in the Mines at 18 and Was Employed Underground at Least 30 Years. A Sick Man, He Has Lost One Leg. He Receives 

$78 a Month in Social Security. Jack Corn, 1974. 

 

 

 

250 

dramatic use of light, stronger composition, and far greater degree of intimacy than his 

photograph of another disabled miner, Ken Hatfield, 74, of Newton, West Virginia (Figure 110) 

that he made for Documerica. Both Democrats, Corn recalls having a long conversation with 

Marlowe about politics the day he made the photograph. He said after first meeting Marlowe 

right after the accident in 1963, he became one of the people he visited with most over the years. 

Corn writes: “every time I came to the valley after this first eye-opening visit, I had to go see 

him. He would always know when I was in the Valley. Louise Adams or Marie Cirillo would tell 

me, ‘Ed wants to see you.’ I admired and respected him for his strength of character. I saw Ed for 

the last time in October 1979.”346  

The demonstrated mastery of light, composition and moment present in the Marlowe 

photograph is not found in the Hatfield photograph, which reads more as being hurried and 

forced than a natural exchange. The man’s expression suggests the same level of mutual comfort 

between Corn and Marlowe was not achieved between Corn and Hatfield giving the photograph 

a stiff and uncomfortable feel. Two photographs of similar porch scenes further illustrate the 

contrast in Corn’s work. The photograph he made, titled “Huddlestons on porch” (Figure 111) 

shows brothers Jim and Steele Huddleston, along with Steele’s wife Pauline talking on the porch 

of their mountain cabin. Jim is leaning back in his chair, smiling as Steele looks to his wife who 

appears to be talking. The tightness of the frame creates a closeness with the Huddlestons and the 

ease of their postures makes it feel as though Corn, and by extension the viewer is part of the 

conversation playing out in that moment. Corn’s photograph (Figure 112) of a similar scene 

shows a group of miners talking on the porch of the Coal City Club, a local miner bar in 

Beckley, West Virginia. Compared to the photograph of the Huddlestons, the looseness of this  

346 Corn, 2000 

 

 

251 

 
Figure 111. “Huddlestons on porch” Jim, Steele and Pauline Huddleston on porch of their mountain cabin.  

Jack Corn, 1957–1978.  

Figure 112. Coal City Club in Coal City, West Virginia, a Part of Beckley All of the Men Are Coal Miners. Note That Some of 
Them Are “Hunkering Down” Rather Than Sitting. This Is a Familiar Stance to All Miners Who Use This Posture in the Mine 

Shafts Which Have Low Ceilings. Jack Corn, 1974. 

 

 

 

 

252 

frame places the subjects at a distance, creating a disconnect between them and the viewer. The 

light is flat, and half of the miners are in a dull shadow cast by a white-and-red stripped awning 

extending from the building’s façade over the porch, rendering the miners expressionless figures 

perched on the back of a wooden bench. Unlike the feeling of being on the Huddlestons porch, 

this scene seems transient and passive, as if Corn just raised his camera while walking by, rather 

than stopping to be in the conversation. 

Documerica has been widely criticized for flaws in its execution. Photojournalists were 

hired who didn’t have adequate time to spend on their assignments while maintaining the 

demands of their newspaper jobs, the scope of the project was too broad, and the directive given 

to the photographers too vague.347 For a project modeled after the work of Roy Stryker and the 

FSA photographic survey he directed, little if any of Documerica resembles its inspiration. 

Media sociologists Dustin Greenwalt and Brian Creech argue Documerica’s broad scope lead to 

a fractured visual narrative that delivered a dichotomy of nostalgias. In one regard the images 

captured by photographers elicited a longing for a return to the post-World War II manufacturing  

boom while at the same time, a desire for an aesthetic of nature unspoiled by the activities of 

industry.348  

As aesthetically different as Corn’s Documerica work is, he still manages to present a 

similar social critique, one shared by Documerica photography from many photographers across 

the project. Historians Bruce Berman and Mary Cronin write: “Many of the images demonstrate 

the extent of environmental degradation to the nation brought about by large-scale industrial 

pollution, coupled with a hands-off regulatory approach for much of the 20th century. The 

347 Berman and Cronin, 2018 
348 Greenwalt and Creech, 2018 

 

 

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images, therefore, serve as testimony to what can happen in a laissez-faire political climate.”349 

Despite its flaws, Corn said Documerica gave him the opportunity to see how mining was 

affecting the people and environment in other areas, especially where there were still coal jobs. 

Despite not living up to its ambition in the movement, Documerica photographers did leave an 

indelible visual record of environmentalism in the 1970s. And as much as the work of 

photographers such as Lewis W. Hine, W. Eugene Smith, Margaret Bourke-White and Sebastião 

Salgado work to illuminate exploitation and dangerous working conditions in mines, they also 

celebrate the heroism of labor.  

With so much of the discourse of the environmental movement tied to aesthetics, the 

visuality of awareness, beauty and enjoyment of nature, photographs like Corn’s became an 

important reinforcement of what happens when that beauty disappears. The encroaching 

“ugliness” of the American landscape Galbraith and Udall lamented was indelibly captured by 

photographers across the country armed with Hasselblads, Rollieflexs, Leicas and Nikons. 

Photography historian and critic Howard Bossen and environmental journalism scholar Eric 

Freedman note that one of the challenges photographers sometimes face is that, depending on the 

nature of the environmental issue, evidence of devastation can appear “invisible and sites of 

contamination, at times, unremarkable.”350 Visualizing issues of water contamination, for 

example, is not as challenging in situations where the devastation is easily seen, like towers of 

thick black smoke billowing off the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland as it burned, or a thick black 

stream of oil spreading across the surface of the ocean from an oil rig off the coast of Santa 

Barbara. When journalists from the Chicago Tribune covered the issue of silt deposits and other 

forms of contamination in the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal for a “Save Our Lake,” series, they had 

349 Berman and Cronin, 2018: 187 
350 Bossen and Freedman, 2015: 75 

 

 

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to take a more illustrative approach and photographed their hands covered in muck suspended 

below the surface of Lake Michigan.351  

 
THE AMERICAN COAL MINER 
 

 

As the 1970s drew to a close, Corn was contacted by his mentor Russell Lee to once 

again work on a government survey project. The President’s Commission on Coal was preparing 

to do another exhaustive report on the coal industry, its first since 1947. Having worked on “A 

Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry,” Lee served as the new project’s photographic 

advisor. Lee hired Corn along with photographers Kenneth Murray, Martha M Simmons and 

Theodore M. Wathen to document the contemporary life of coal miners across the country. 

Published in 1980, the commission’s report, titled “The American Coal Miner: A Report on 

Community and Living Conditions in the Coalfields,” provides an overview of contemporary 

mining as well as examinations of housing, health and safety, transportation, lifestyles, women in 

the coal mines and Navajo coal miners. As he did for Documerica, Corn focuses on the lives of 

miners in Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. Unlike his photographs for Documerica, 

Corn’s work for An American Coal Miner more closely resembles the aesthetic quality and 

intimacy achieved in his earlier Appalachia work. Corn shot 161 rolls of black and white film for 

the project. Freed from consideration of color, as was required in Documerica, and with a 

narrower project scope, Corn returns to the detailed depth and skilled seeing of his humanistic 

style; his compositions are more thoughtful and use of light more dramatic. For example, the 

candidness of his photograph of miner Robert Davis (Figure 113) is nostalgic of the comfort felt 

between Corn and his subjects seen in his photographs of the Clear Fork Valley. Using a tight  

351 Neuzil, 2008: 185 

 

 

255 

 
Figure 113. Miner Robert Davis greets his daughter, Mrs. Katherine Cook, and grandchildren after work in Man,  

W. Va. Jack Corn 1978. 

 

256 

Figure 114. Dr. Abdul Dahhan specializes in pulmonary medicine. A native of Syria, he has practiced in this  

country for the past 12 years. He is a member of the staff of the Daniel Boone Clinic in Harlan, Ky. Jack Corn, 1978. 

 

 

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frame, Corn captures a spontaneous and unguarded moment as Davis hugs one of his 

granddaughters after completing a shift in a deep shaft mine near Man, West Virginia. Light 

bathes the embrace providing ample contrast and a warmth that reads through the 

monochromatic tones of the photograph. Davis’s joy is shared by his daughter, Kathrine Cook 

sitting to his left. The photograph is used as a full page in the introduction, which sets up the 

major issues covered in 233 pages, as well as offering introductions to the areas documented in 

the report. Another photograph, while as intimate, depicts a more serious issue—health. Corn’s 

photograph of Dr. Abdul Dahhan explores the issue of doctor shortages in Appalachia. The 

photograph (Figure 114) shows Dahhan, a pulmonary specialist, examining a miner at the Daniel 

Boone Clinic in Harlan, Kentucky. Dahhan left his home in Syria to come to Kentucky to fill a 

growing need for specialists who could treat illnesses such as black lung disease.  

Corn and Rogovin both worked to move the aesthetic of mining photography away from 

heroics. For Rogovin, it was an effort to divorce the notion of what these miners did from who 

they were; for Corn it was illustrating the tragic effect over time of mining on the identities of a  

people and place, which he achieved in his independent, newspaper and Documerica work and 

have become his lasting legacy. Both photographers also predated Documerica in looking at the 

effects mining was having on the landscape. In 2000 Corn began reflecting on his work in 

Appalachia, writing a detailed chronicle he titled “Valleys of Despair” that spans five decades of 

his social and environmental activism through photography. Modeled after Let Us Now Praise 

Famous Men and Night Comes to the Cumberlands, Corn offers a series of literary tableaus—

textural portraits of the images he made documenting the particulars of the social struggle  

 

258 

experienced by miners and their families in Appalachia and underscoring the importance of such 

work. Corn writes: “After 50 years as a photojournalist, I am still outraged by humans’ 

indifference to the suffering of other humans.”352

352 Corn, 2000 

 

 

259 

CHAPTER 8 

VIEWS OF A MODEL VALLEY: 

REFLECTING ON AESTHETICS OF HOPE, DESPAIR, AND ENVIROMENTALISM  

IN PHOTOGRAPHS OF APPALACHIAN COAL FIELDS (1956-1977) 

 
 

 

 
 

“Coal is a commodity utterly lacking in glamour. It is dirty, old-fashioned, domestic, and cheap. 

Coal suffers particularly when compared to its more dazzling and worldly cousin, oil, which 
conjure up dramatic images of risk takers, jetsetters, and international conspiracies. […] Coal 
does not make us think of the rich, but of the poor. It evokes bleak images of soot-covered coal 

miners trudging from the mines, supporting their desperately poor families in grim little 

company towns.”353  

— Barbara Freese, 2003  

Writer and environmental policy analyst Barbara Freese vividly captured in the above 

passage from her book, Coal: A Human History one sentiment central to a popular discourse of 

coal explored in this dissertation. Her observation that coal is ordinary, mundane, and disposable 

is one that has often worked itself into visual narratives that also characterize those who heave 

the substance from the Earth. Freese’s assertion, however, is limited to a domestic perspective of 

the observed commonality and un-remarkableness of coal itself as an object. This perspective 

lacks consideration of the extraordinary power that society’s dependence on coal in the 19th and 

20th centuries allowed corporations to exert over people and land. All told, coal mining is a 

complex cultural and socio-economic phenomenon, accompanied by an equally complex legacy. 

Without it, the modern world would not look as it does. Coal’s effect on modernity lies both in 

terms of what it as a source of energy made possible, but also in terms of the scars left in its 

stead—scars that can be found deeply gouged into mountains and valleys on every continent, and 

in the lives and communities that were destroyed through its extraction. Their own writings 

suggest that Corn perhaps understood this complexity better than Rogovin did, or at the very 

353 Freese, 2003: 2–3 

 

 

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least was more willing to acknowledge it from the onset. Rogovin arrived in West Virginia with 

a specific aesthetic vision informed by a very specific political ideology—this vision was to 

show the socio-economic effects of corporate greed that were impoverishing a region. Corn also 

was interested in documenting injustices and inequality; however, he also understood that coal 

was an important resource, vital for both industry and in providing livelihoods for those still 

employed by the coal industry. What the preceding examination has revealed in the Appalachia 

bodies of work of these two photographers is what former New York Times photography critic 

Andy Grundberg describes as parallel histories of photography and art.354 In one regard we have 

in Rogovin an artist who made photographs; and in Corn, a photographer who happened to make 

art. Rogovin’s affinity with painters such as Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier and Käthe 

Kollwitz and his combined use of photography, poetry and drawing in expressing his point of 

view reflect his self-identification as being purely an artist. Corn, on the other hand, identified as 

a journalist, yet his mastery of photographic technology and the photographic medium resulted in 

remarkably aesthetic visual reportage. 

Over the past seven chapters, evidence has been laid out to support three main arguments 

made in this dissertation. The purpose of this chapter is to reflect upon the evidence presented to 

support those arguments by underscoring the analysis of source material related to this 

dissertation’s guiding questions. Discussions from each chapter will be summarized to show how 

the evidence supports the arguments that Corn and Rogovin had significant impact in changing 

the way society understood coal mining through disruption of visual discourse of mining; that 

their work pre-dates Documerica in visually documenting the effects of human activity on the 

environment; and that in repositioning visual discourse of mining their work protests the 

354 Grundberg, 2002: 29 
 

 

 

261 

conditions and hegemonic structures of power they encountered in Appalachia coal mining 

communities. The historical narratives and discourse discussed throughout this dissertation will 

also be examined in the context of contemporary issues related to the coal mining industry and 

the broader concepts of visualizing climate change and understanding climate change denial that 

underscores the importance, relevance and timeliness of this research. 

DISRUPTING THE COLONIAL DISCOURSE OF KING COAL 

 

 

Both Corn and Rogovin initially arrived in Appalachia possessing a similar bleak, soot-

covered vision of miners that Freese described. The notion of miners being dirty and disposable 

is a narrative that slowly formed over centuries of class politics. A 1906 postcard (Figure 115) 

from an anthracite mine near Scranton, Pennsylvania underscores the commodification of 

miners. It shows a miner on crutches down in the mine returning to work injured rather than 

being replaced. Coal mining was an apparatus for the rigid reinforcement of power the 

bourgeoisie held over the proletariat, but it also played a role in reinforcing negative nativist 

views of Slavic immigrants from Eastern Europe. Slavic immigrants, along with Italians, were 

often discursively positioned as being uncivilized, sub-human savages, and the little value their 

lives had was at work in the dangerous and often lethal coal mines.355  

Photography, with its ability to accurately render the detail of a subject and scene, aided 

in advancing these narratives as photographers were drawn to the danger of mining as an exotic 

subject matter, and to its gritty aesthetics. Photographers were also drawn to the heroics of 

mining, illustrating its vital importance to the nation’s industrial prowess and power. Advances 

in photographic technology such as the dark tent allowed for photography in remote areas,  

355 Higham, 1967: 47–48; 88–89 

 

 

262 

Figure 115. Postcard “Slate Pickers Anthracite Coal Mining, Scranton, PA.,” 1906. 

 

 

263 

including the rugged mineral rich landscape of the American West; and the advent of flash 

powder allowed photographers to expand their view of mining below ground. These technologies 

allowed photographers to conquer the view and show their dominance of the land, both above it, 

and below. By the early 20th century, soot-covered miners locked in stoic stares, set against the 

dark, gritty industrial subterranean landscapes, became the prevailing aesthetic of coal mining. 

This aesthetic reinforced the discourse that miners were poor and identity-less drudges, laboring 

away in the dark, out of sight and unimportant. In a great irony of materialism, however, that 

which coal fueled was admired and romanticized—the ocean-going steamship, the locomotive, 

electric power all marveled over and celebrated as monumental achievements of industrial might. 

Both Corn and Rogovin were able to look beyond the historic aesthetics to see a different 

nature and character of the people and place that lay beneath the soot. Throughout this 

dissertation, even in its title, there has been a notion of Appalachians living in valleys of despair. 

That characterization stems from the perceptions and discourses of outsiders, including reporters 

from The Tennessean and Corn himself early in his career. In concluding this dissertation, this 

chapter borrows its title from the hope and determination shared by those in Appalachia who 

believed that they alone could make their communities better. By improving living conditions, 

providing better access to medical care, educational resources, and spurring new industry 

individuals like Marie Cirillo, Louise Adams and Don Rasmussen worked to lift their 

communities from despair and transform them into model valleys. In the end, these tireless 

advocates helped Corn and Rogovin to see what was ultimately good in these places, when so 

many had focused on what was bad.  

The expanded view of the Appalachian coal fields seen in Corn’s and Rogovin’s 

photographs repositioned their subjects in discourse. Corn’s photographs show that while the rest 

 

264 

of the country was enjoying the benefits coal provided—ample heat, inexpensive electricity, the 

free movement of goods produced in a thriving economy—it was destroying lives and 

landscapes in the areas where it was mined. This disrupted and challenged a seemingly 

unimpeachable colonial notion of coal’s role in American society from fueling prosperity to 

fueling the destruction of a people and place. Corn’s photographs exposed this harsh reality that 

those living outside Appalachia were either blind to or chose to ignore. Equally as powerful, 

Rogovin’s photographs reposition coal miners in a very different way. Rogovin challenged 

directly the soot-covered miner aesthetic by showing the miner both at work then completely 

outside of the context of the mine. He uses time and location as a mechanism to create movement 

and transformation in his subjects and their narrative. His diptychs begin with a more traditional 

view of a miner in a mining setting; then work to dismantle the miner’s anonymity as an 

industrial worker to show the individuality and personality they embody in their domestic lives. 

Sometimes soot-covered, sometimes clean at the beginning of shift, the first portrait immediately 

conjures nostalgia for the historic mining aesthetic that the second works to destroy; this creates 

a powerful tension in Rogovin’s portraiture. 

 
AESTEHTICS, ADVOCACY AND ACTIVISM IN APPALACHIA 
 

 

Corn and Rogovin positioned themselves as activists challenging the aesthetics of 

Appalachian coal communities and the discourses they historically supported. As much as 

Corn’s photographs are a record that visually document the destruction perpetrated by the coal 

industry, they celebrate a resurrection of the independent spirit of the Appalachian people. It is 

inescapable that Corn, like many other photographers including Rogovin, was drawn to what 

writer Silas House describes as the natural aesthetic of poverty found in many parts 

 

265 

Appalachia.356 But for Corn there was more to the story in Clear Fork than poverty; poverty was 

the result of the degradation of land and way of life through the exploitive practices of the coal 

industry, but just as important, poverty was also a beginning out of which rose advocates and 

leaders whose desire for change was equaled by their vision and ambition. Cirillo said that 

Corn’s photographs did have a positive effect on the community. They appreciated seeing 

themselves portrayed as more than just poor hillbillies, and his photographs did influence 

change.357 For example, the day after Corn’s photograph (Figure 116) of children dancing on the 

crumbling porch of the Clairfield School was published in The Tennessean with a story about the 

school’s deteriorating condition, Magistrate Carl Rice ordered the buildings be inspected by a 

state fire marshal. In a follow up article, the magistrate suggested he would order that they be 

condemned and demolished. He was quoted in the article saying that the buildings would “burn 

to the ground in a minute if they ever caught fire. […] the children would have no chance to 

escape.”358 The school was demolished and a new one built on the site. The Claiborne County 

superintendent insisted the photograph had nothing to do with the school being rebuilt. Cirillo, 

however disagrees, and said that parents in the community had been complaining about the 

conditions of the two schools in the Clear Fork Valley for a long time, but nothing was done 

about it until the media attention forced the district’s hand.359 

 

Rogovin’s Appalachian activism was more subtle. Being active in labor movements and 

demonstrations in Buffalo, Rogovin’s socialist ideology led him to sympathize with Appalachian 

advocacy groups who were calling for a nationalization of the coal industry. Rogovin did not 

address health and safety issues of the miners directly in his photographs like Corn’s did. He did,  

356 House, 2018 
357 Cirillo, 2019 
358 Kovach, 1964 
359 Cirillo, 2019 

 

 

266 

Figure 116. “Boy dances on porch, Clairfield School,” Clairfield, Tennessee. Jack Corn, 1964. 

 

 

 

267 

however, attend local demonstrations and town hall meetings with legislators and other 

policymakers regarding regulatory and public health responses to black lung disease. His notes  

on the back of a handout from a 1970 question and answer session with U.S. Representative Ken 

Heckler—who represented West Virginia’s 4th Congressional District—include a sketch of a few 

others in attendance at the meeting. The sketch (Figure 117) shows a man standing with his arms 

crossed. In front of him the torso of man who appears to have no legs is turned to look behind 

him, his left arm draped casually over the armrest of his wheelchair. It is possible the man in 

Rogovin’s sketch was Jack Smith (Figure 118), a disabled miner whom Corn photographed as 

part of his Documerica assignment. Smith, a resident of Rhodell, West Virginia—which would 

have been in the 4th District—was an outspoken black lung activist and often picketed with 

miners on strike out of solidarity.360  

Rogovin’s efforts in Appalachia came from a desire to bring attention to conditions there 

and change people’s perception of the miner’s themselves. Rogovin was a prolific letter writer, 

and in letters he wrote to local contacts asking for help with access, he expressed his and Anne’s 

desire to help the people of the region. In letters to Robert Coles, he discusses his Appalachia 

project and asks Coles for insight and guidance in how to approach the issue of inadequate 

access to medical care in the region. After corresponding with Harry Caudill, Rogovin provided 

him images to illustrate his book My Land Is Dying. Many of the letters he wrote, to galleries, 

magazines, newspapers, and myriad of influential individuals were to promote himself and his 

work. Rogovin so closely sympathized with his subjects and identified himself by the work he 

produced that it is difficult to separate him from his work and work from the issues he cared 

deeply about. While promoting himself or a project he was also fiercely promoting awareness of  

360 Corn, 1974 

 

 

268 

Figure 117. Sketch of a disabled miner at a black lung meeting in West Virginia. Milton Rogovin, 1970. 

 

 

269 

Figure 118. Original Caption: Jack Smith, 42, Rhodell, West Virginia, Seated in the Beer Joint He Operates in a Wheel-Chair 
(sic) Bought for Him by His Friend Arnold Miller, President of the United Mine Workers Union. He Was Disabled at Age 21 

after a Year in the Mines and Had to Wait 18 Years to Collect Workman’s Compensation. He Stays Current on Union Affairs and 

Will Man a Picket Line. During the Strike for Black Lung Benefits His Wife Wheeled Him in Front of a Train to Stop It. Jack 

 

270 

Corn, 1974. 

 

the issues and causes he worked to expose through his photographs such as inequality or the 

environment. 

SHOWING THE NEED FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION  

Neither Corn nor Rogovin suggested that environmental concerns were initially part of 

what they aimed to document in Appalachia—their focus at the beginning was on the miners and 

their families. What they did not understand until they began their picture-making projects was 

how connected the people of the region were to the mountains, valleys and streams and that any 

issue they documented, was in fact an environmental issue. In his unpublished autobiography, 

Rogovin offers an unapologetic criticism of the destruction capitalism’s need for coal was 

creating. Describing his observations of the troubling destruction of the land he and Anne 

witnessed and how it was affecting the people of Appalachia Rogovin writes: 

But beyond the tragedies, Appalachia’s people must live with every day—the hunger and 
malnutrition and high infant mortality rate and widespread joblessness—there is still 
another tragedy being enacted there. Thousands and thousands of acres of land have 
been, and are right now being, or soon scheduled to be cut into—STRIPPED is all too 
emphatic and suggestive and appropriate word—so that coal can be obtained and shipped 
to America’s over needy industrial empire. Never mind that beautiful trees are felled. 
Never mind that the flowers and shrubs and meadows are covered over. Never mind that 
the clear streams and creeks and rivers become slowing moving monsters; acid kills fish; 
poisonous mud is deposited all over and kills grass, not to mention the wildlife that 
ordinarily sticks close to water. Never mind that farms are destroyed, and homes, and 
roads, and indeed entire hills, entire settlements of people. Coal is needed by factories 
and power companies and TVA, so coal will be obtained—quickly and efficiently and 
directly.361  
 

Corn wrote a similar sentiment about his work in Appalachia in a 2012 post on his Facebook 

page:  

The people of Appalachia are a proud people. They were very open and honest with me, 
welcoming me into their homes and to their tables. They loved the beauty and solitude of 
the mountains. I think I understood their love of the land. I felt the same enthusiasm for 

361 Rogovin, 1997: 44 

 

 

271 

the rough terrain. Coal mining changed the landscape forever and the land was never 
again the same. A whole new society came into being with the coal camps. I began 
photographing during a time when the coal camps were disappearing. Their whole world 
had crumbled.362 
 

Corn’s environmental photographs, like the written narratives they accompanied, were meant to 

provoke society into demanding some type of change. Corn said that through years of picture-

making, The Tennessean coverage and pressure from environmental groups including TCWP and 

SOCM, the Tennessee State Assembly began introducing legislation in 1973 aimed at tightening 

strip mining laws. The state’s action was bolstered by a set of new federal regulations granted 

through the Water Pollution Control Act, which made stream pollution of any kind against the 

law.363  

What Corn and Rogovin came to realize through their picture-making was what biologist 

Barry Commoner describes as the first law of ecology: Everything is connected to everything 

else.364 While it provided jobs to some, coal mining stifled development of new industries, 

leaving those not employed by coal in poverty. Removing the coal required removing rock and 

soil that flowed down the mountains and fouled streams and farmland, tainted drinking water and 

strained local sources of food. Poor nutrition and exposure to pollution led to issues of public 

health. The mountainous terrain that provided the coal and employment for many also isolated 

towns and people and cut them off from access to vital resources and access to health care. While 

other photographers such as Lewis Hine, Marion Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, and Russell Lee 

episodically documented working conditions, living conditions, or poverty, their individual focus 

was limited to one aspect or another of life in Appalachian coal fields. Corn, and to a lesser 

extent Rogovin, addressed all of these interconnected issues in their photography. Considered 

 

362 Corn, 2012 
363 Corn, 2000 
364 Commoner, 1971: 3–11 

 

272 

both together and separately, their bodies of work provide a much broader, more holistic view 

the issues facing Appalachian miners, their families and their communities than had been 

achieved by photographers before them; and in addressing these issues, they approached mining 

from an environmental perspective before Night Comes to the Cumberlands, the environmental 

movement, the EPA, or Documerica.  

CONCLUSION 

 

 

Project director Gifford Hampshire has been criticized for creating too broad a directive 

for Documerica. In the project’s guidelines for photographers, Hampshire encouraged them to 

produce “documentation of what the people of the nation do, or are, or think, or feel, or whatever 

it is that’s connected to everything else.”365 But it is the broadness of scope, echoing 

Commoner’s first law of ecology, that allowed the project photographers to explore the complex 

relationship between mankind and the physical world. Though not initially a success, there has 

been renewed interest in Documerica among scholars and in the news media as the photographs 

illustrate the dangers un-or under-regulated industry pose to society. Step into one of Professor 

Nancy Langston’s environmental history classes at Michigan Technological University in 

Houghton, Michigan and one will see her using Documerica images to dispel students’ 

perceptions of what Lake Superior looked like before the Clean Water Act.366 Headlines like 

“DOCUMERICA: Images of America in Crisis in the 1970s,”367 “Do We Need A New 

Documerica?”368 and “Documerica, a photo time capsule of the ’70s, should be resurrected,”369 

 

365 Hampshire, 1972: 4–5 
366 Langston, 2018 
367 Taylor, 2011 
368 O’Neill, 2013 
369 Sisson, 2017 

 

273 

underscore the importance of photographic documentation of the environment in historic and 

contemporary contexts.  

Today, polar ice caps and glaciers are melting at an alarming rate;370,371 sea levels are 

rising;372 storms becoming more violent;373 droughts more devastating374; and wildfires more 

extreme.375 At this very moment billions of people are in self-quarantine as the world is crippled 

by the spread of a virus at pandemic rate, putting the lives of millions at risk. In Discipline and 

Punish: The Birth of the Prison, philosopher Michel Foucault writes about the importance 

visuality played during another pandemic through his notion of panopticism. The visual 

inspection for symptoms of individuals presenting themselves at their windows forced 

individuals to obey quarantine and helped contain the spread of the bubonic plague that killed 

millions living in 17th -century Europe.376 Visualizations of the plague have manifested in the 

visual lexicon of coronavirus through memes (Figure 118), and images (Figure 119) reminiscent 

of the menacing and macabre protective masks, goggles and hat (Figure 120) worn by doctors 

fighting the pandemic. 

Investigating how society visualizes the environment and all the ways it is connected to 

daily life and well-being is vital to understanding historical and contemporary perceptions of 

environmental issues. The way that we see the world is heavily influenced by what we are able to 

observe. What we observe is fundamental in forming our conceptualization of the physical 

world, the societies that exist in that world and our understanding and perception of how these  

 

370 Carrington, 2020 
371 Glick, 2020 
372 Lindsey, 2019 
373 Union of Concerned Scientists, 2019 
374 Union of Concerned Scientists, 2014 
375 Union of Concerned Scientists, 2020 
376 Foucault, 1977: 195–199 

 

274 

Figure 119. Plague doctor Corona Virus meme. Imgflip.com, 2020. 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

275 

Figure 120. Medical staff transfer patients to hospital in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 17, 2020. GETTY IMAGES. 

 

 

276 

Figure 121. Venetian Doctor during the time of the plague. Pen, ink and watercolor on paper. 
Grevenbroeck Jan van Museo Correr (1731–1807). The Bridgeman Art Library, Venice, Italy. 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

277 

concepts interact. Exposure to visual messages, such as photographs, plays an important role in 

the process of socialization and belief building as they are a gateway to a broader reality beyond 

the physical limitation of what we are able to see in person.377 This dissertation has examined 

how historical photographs of mines and miners illustrated environmental and social justice 

issues such as land use, poverty, education and health prior to the environmental movement, 

disrupting popular discourse of the time. The approach Corn and Rogovin took is important in 

understanding the connectedness between humans and their environment because they showed 

all of these issues being experienced in the same place by the same people. In Corn’s 

unpublished manuscript, he wrote that he was proud of his small contribution to the 

environmental victories in the Clear Fork Valley when new state regulations limiting strip 

mining were enacted. In his account, Corn included a verse from a song that folk singer Billy 

Christopher wrote and performed at a series of demonstrations against surface mining. The 

lyrics, like Corn’s and Rogovin’s photographs, show how delicate trees, and even mountains, can 

be. This delicateness underscores the importance of the environment to society’s spiritual, 

cultural and physical well-being, and how important it is to protect it. 

A million years to make 
A mountain. 
A hundred years to grow a  
Tree: 
A few short days with a Big 
Bulldozer, 
Will send it all down to the 
Sea…

 
377 Berger and Luckman, 1966: 19–46 

 

278 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

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279 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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