The coalfields as art

In Florida, a photographer has an exhibit of pictures from the coalfields of West Virginia:

"For three years Ken Light photographed the death of the coal industry and its culture in the struggling mining communities and former coal company towns of West Virginia. Extreme poverty, welfare dependence, major diseases like 'black lung'; a sense of hopelessness about lost jobs and lost heritage is haunting the country"s most impoverished state. This is the first complete showing of the Coal Hollow exhibition, with more than seventy of Ken Light's powerful photographs presented with accompanying oral histories and text by Melanie Light."

Some of the photos can be see at the photographer's website.