Beneath the surface: Mining and American photography review: Power sources

Washington

When you throw the switch, you want the light to come on; America’s abundant energy and mineral resources ensure it will. How those resources are extracted is the subject of “Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography,” an exhibition of over 150 pictures at the National Gallery of Art through Aug. 23.

The photographic technologies utilized begin with daguerreotypes and include stereoscopic prints, a cyanotype, gelatin silver prints, large-format chromogenic works and images created with digital manipulation, neatly demonstrating the show’s long time span. This complex project was conceived by Diane Waggoner, acting head and curator of photographs at the museum, and curated by her and Kristen Gaylord, curator of photography and media arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Later this year it will travel to Milwaukee, and in 2027 to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Everyday news headlines of several running stories—involving economics, science, politics, international relations—remind us how timely it is.

The exhibition, which wends through eight contiguous galleries, begins with a visual overture, seven pictures that preview what’s ahead. Mitch Epstein’s “Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond City, West Virginia 2004,” a very large (62-by-80-inch) inkjet picture, greets us at the entrance. In the foreground is the inviting backyard of a middle-class home: sunlit green grass, a tool shed, a picnic table, but no people. In the distance, somewhat grayed by atmospheric haze, are the smokestacks and cooling tower of the power plant. This nicely establishes what “Beneath the Surface” is about; the domestic tranquility of the foreground depends on the industrial heft that’s barely seen behind.

By the middle of the 19th century, home heating and an expanding network of railroads required reliable supplies of coal. A major mining and rail company hired Thomas H. Johnson to document its Pennsylvania operations; the three pictures on display, dated 1863 to 1865, would have been used to inform the public, reassure investors and attract new customers. Coal is a recurring subject; William H. Rau’s “South Plainfield Coal Storage, capacity 100,000 tons, Lehigh Valley Railroad” (c. 1895) has a train of loaded coal cars going up the middle and huge heaps of coal on either side. A crew of men with blackened faces wearing steel hats with flashlights attached stands in the dark “Anthracite Coal Mine Near Pottsville, Pennsylvania,” photographed by Jack Delano in 1938.

Victoria Sambunaris needed a large format for her chromogenic print “Untitled (Coaldale, Pennsylvania)” (2007) to emphasize how diminutive the mining equipment is in the vast open pit it created. Arthur Grace’s “Coal Miners’ Strike, Kelley’s Creek Hollow, West Virginia” (December 1977) is part of a series that deals with labor issues; a miner holds a sign that says, “No Benefits No Coal.” The miners’ hard circumstances are represented by the shabby housing in Dorothea Lange’s tender “Daughter of Migrant Tennessee Coal Miner, Living in American River Camp, near Sacramento, California” (1936). In contrast, Richard Avedon’s “Roger Skaarland, Jim Bingham, coal miners, Reliance, Wyoming, 8/29/79” (1979) is large and dramatic, but, with no background for context, smacks a bit of fashion photography.

The country’s first commercial oil well was tapped near Titusville, Pa., in 1859. “Oil Creek between Titusville and Oil City,” taken in 1860, possibly by John Mather, shows one derrick. A picture taken by him 10 years later in Titusville shows a field littered with derricks. Like Johnson’s pictures of coal operations, Mather’s work was commissioned by owners for investors and stockholders. Among the unusual oil-related pictures taken subsequently are Sonya Noskowiak’s “Oil Tanks, Richmond, California” (1938), a study of the bulbous shapes, and Andreas Feininger’s “Oil Derricks on Signal Hill, California” (1948), a beautifully composed image in which the derricks appear as delicate parts of a vast sculpture. Modernist photographer Edward Weston unexpectedly shows up at “Gulf Oil—Pt. Arthur” (1941) to make what he can of the industrial site.

More recent pictures tend to deal with environmental and political issues. David Maisel’s “American Mine, Carlin, Nevada 1” (2007), a large-format inkjet print, is an aerial photo of the waste pond of the richest source of gold particles in the Western Hemisphere; its vivid emerald color advertises its toxicity. The pea-green water in Richard Misrach’s “Swamp and Pipeline, Geismar, Louisiana” (1998) has a similar message. Several works involve Native American protests over land rights. In “Oil & Gold” (2021) photographer Cara Romero poses Naomi White Horse (Northern Chumash/Sicangu Lakota) and Crickett Tiger (Muscogee Creek/Cochiti) as monumental personifications of oil and gold in front of a refinery in Los Angeles. Zig Jackson, Rising Buffalo (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) poses himself in indigenous regalia sitting on the rim of a huge open pit in “Indian Man at Kennecott Copper Mine, Tooele, Utah” (2004).

Wall texts remind us that the equipment and materials photographers use for their craft are all dependent on mining of one sort or another. So is just about everything we use. “Beneath the Surface” lets us see what it takes to keep the lights burning.

Beneath the Surface: Mining and American Photography

National Gallery of Art, through Aug. 23

Mr. Meyers writes on photography for the Journal. His photo book “Civics” (Apollo Publishers) comes out next week.