About This Series

This series portrays miners in ten nations. In 1962, Milton and Anne Rogovin traveled to Appalachia for the first of nine visits. Photographs were taken of mountains devastated by mining operations as well as of miners at their work places and in the neighborhoods where they worked. Milton captured the effects of Black Lung disease and unemployment. In the Family of Miners series, workers were photographed with hard hats and lanterns and coal blackened faces, at rest, in below-ground changing rooms, or on elevators descending into the mines. When not at work, they were photographed at festivals, at local pubs, or at home with their families or with their pets.

At that time, only women in the US were allowed to work below ground. Milton made a special effort to photograph these women. Miners in this series are African, African-American, Hispanic, Asian and white.

After Milton received the W. Eugene Smith Award for Documentary Photography (1983) from the International Center of Photography, he was able to expand his Family of Miners series to include ten nations. Mines were photographed in Zimbabwe (1989), Mexico (1988), Cuba (1984-89), Appalachia (1962-87), Czechoslovakia (1990), Germany (1984), France (1981), Spain (1983), Scotland (1982), and China (1986).

Related Publications

• Milton Rogovin: The Mining Photographs, The Getty Museum, Oxford University Press, 2005

• Picture Man: the Poetry of Photographer Milton Rogovin, [DVD] 19 min. 23 sec, 70 photographs, 17 poems, 2009

• Milton Rogovin: The Lens & the Pen: Photographs and Poems, Published by Palisade Press, 2009

• The Bonds Between Us: Family Portraits From Around The World, White Pine Press, 2001

• With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba, Poems by Nancy Morejón, Photographs by Milton Rogovin, White Pine Press, 2004

• Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones, University of Washington Press, 1985; Quantuck Lane Press, 2003

• Milton Rogovin: The Making of a Social Documentary Photographer, University of Washington Press and the Center for Creative Photography, September 30, 2006

For curriculum and a folio download of the Family of Miners series please visit the education page.