Jody DiPerna at The Belt:
When Raymond Thompson, Jr. started looking through the archives of the Hawks Nest tunnel, he was struck by how absent the five thousand plus men who worked the dig were. It was, rather, a celebration of the engineering feat and the important men involved. Thompson’s new book, “Appalachian Ghost: A Photographic Reimagining of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster ” (University Press of Kentucky, 2024,) is a photography collection that provides a necessary corrective while doing some heavy archival lifting.
By focusing the workers through his own craft and virtuosity, Thompson has created a beautiful record that is lamentation and resistance, history and hymn.
The Hawks Nest Tunnel was about three-quarters of a mile long, dug to divert water from New River to a hydroelectric plant at Gauley Junction, West Virginia. Ground was broken on March 31, 1930.
more here.
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