As Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania gets national acclaim for livability and their economic rebound, just twenty or so miles down the Monongahela River shows the true nature of corporate capitalism and American politics. Donora, Monessen, Monongahela, New Eagle and Elrama, were left with no viable option other than to struggle to hold on to a steadily dying middle class and blue-collar lifestyle. These are only five of the seventy towns lining the valley down to West Virginia, all facing a similar economic situation. As industry slowly left this string of communities with a breaking economic backbone, population of the five towns decreased on average over forty percent since the post-depression industrial boom. Monessen, the most dramatic, dropping from 20,268 in 1930 to 7,720 in 2010.
Sixty percent of Washington County voted for Donald Trump, who promised the return of industry and manufacturing across the United States. The promises rang loud in the ears of the valley who recently saw their last two coal power plants close. Energy corporations like First Energy publicly blamed the increasingly “strict” and “costly” regulations of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan policy. With no clear vision of a future, residents look to the industrial success of the past and imagine it coming back. Struggling and forgotten industrial and manufacturing towns in Pennsylvania, and around the country, proved to be an incredibly common yet overlooked aspect of the 2016 election.
Although populations decreased significantly through these towns, they are still claimed home by tens of thousands of people. As the industrial infrastructure decays, blight throughout each area’s “downtown” paints a similar picture. Signs of industry and its direct relationship with the communities are apparent, often blunt. The natural environment’s deterioration, the bleeding hills, piles of coal waste and acidic water are matched by the human environment’s increasing poverty rates and the heroin epidemic.
The Monongahela Valley: a post-industrial portrait is an investigation of the current state of a string of small coal towns. The work looks at the recently closed Elrama (2012) and Mitchell (2013) Power Stations, coal waste dumps, perpetual water pollution and the surrounding struggling residential and rural communities. Through digital photography, the work is a contemporary portrait of a place that focuses on the effects of industry and its decline on the Environment both in the aggregate of physical, chemical, biotic factors as well as the social and cultural conditions.
inevitability//happening is a senior thesis project by jewelry and metals major, Emma Neal. In a collaborative effort, we combined the elements of our individual senior thesis work to create environmental portraits and detail images to display Emma's jewelry.
You can check out Emma's work on Instagram: @emmanealjewelry
Courtney, PA is a short series of medium format photographs made in 2014. The series looks at the environment that Mitchell Power Plant resides in, just months after the plant’s half-century of operation came to an end. The plant, power lines, adjacent mine pollution and massive coal refuse piles transform from an active site to monuments of the past and it’s lingering effects.
As the social climate of the 2016 election began to match the environment, Courtney, PA became a prelude to The Monongahela Valley: a Post-Industrial Portrait
anywhere but home is collected works made from 2014-2017. Each set began as an exploration of a different camera and film, representative of my experiences of place outside of my most comfortable and understood subject matter, home.
Chicago, IL - Baltimore, MD - Cumberland, MD - Cleveland, OH - Calcutta, OH - Lansing, MI
passing through was shot over the course of late 2013 to early 2016 with the intentional restrictions of shooting a focus free 35mm camera within a vehicle. With little control on the outcome, from composing while moving to an unreliable plastic camera, I sought out to understand my most impulsive photographic eye.
2015 is a handmade, 36 page, photobook. The work served as a personal photographic year in review. Reoccurring places, nature and energy shared space within my head and my surroundings.