This exhibition is a special collaboration with FotoFest for FOTOFEST2008
www.fotofest.org
Project Directors: Susan Meiselas & Orville Schell
Design: Jeroen de Vries
Field Coordinator: Gao Lei
Assistant Research: James Zeng Hwang
Assistant Production: Aichen Lin
Participating photographers:
Adou, DONG Lin, GENG Yunsheng, HE Chongyue, Ian Teh, NIU Guozheng, PAN Bo, SONG Chao, WANG Dajiang, WANG Mianli, WU Qi, XING Danwen, YANG Junbo, YANG Shaobin, YU Haibo, ZHANG Jie, ZHANG Xiaowen
And archive images by:
People´s Pictorial, Xinhua/China Features
The exhibition Mined in China turns its focus onto the coal industry that has led to China´s charged economic development, beginning with a country in the 1950´s that revered its coal miners as "model workers" up to the industry of present day, where workers have come to be seen as minute players in the larger machine of rapid industrialization. The work is a presentation through the eyes of a number of photographers that have traveled across the country to document this complex industry as they have witnessed it.
Seventy-percent of China´s energy comes from burning coal, using more coal than the US, Europe, and Japan combined. A new coal plant opens each week across the country, many of which are dangerous, illegal and some of the most hazardous work conditions in the world today. Smoke and pollution linger in the air and many rivers have been stripped of their water due to irrigation and industry uses. As a result of the aggressive use of coal that has given China an enormous amount of economic success, the country and its people risk environmental disaster.
Meiselas will speak about this project and others at DiverseWorks on Sunday, March 9 beginning at 8pm. The lecture is co-sponsored by FotoFest, HCP, DiverseWorks, and University of Houston´s Visual Studies Department.
Susan Meiselas is a documentary photographer and member of Magnum Photos since 1976. She is the author of Carnival Strippers, Nicaragua, El Salvador: The Work of 30 Photographers, Chile from Within, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, Pandora´s Box and Encounters with the Dani.
Her awards include the Robert Capa Gold Medal, Leica Award for Excellence, Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the Hasselblad Foundation Prize and most recently, the Cornell Capa Infinity Award. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow.
Her photographs are included in American and international collections.
