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The tradition of documentary photography in the United States stretches back for almost 150 years. Matthew Brady documented the death and destruction of the Civil War; at the turn of the twentieth century, Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine photographed…

Image: Harvan photographed Ferrence, then retired, with one foot raised on the caterpillar tread of the diesel shovel he had collected on his farm; he didn't carry the weight of his earlier years, but he still had the same slight smile and confident gaze.…

Image: Sabron with a younger miner cleaning up the No. 9 mine to restore it for use as a tourist attraction. Although suffering from black lung disease, Sabron maintained an active life into his mid-80s.

Image: The anthracite region of Pennsylvania stretches northeast from Tower City to Carbondale, a narrow swath covering slightly less than five hundred square miles in a triangular five-county area. The region was little more than a wilderness at the turn…

Image: The Harvan family, 1922. Anna Harvan holds George in her lap.

Image: George Harvan at a CCC Camp, 1941.

Image: Gabe Ferrence in 1978 in front of a dragline shovel at the Springdale strippings, one of several eighty-year-old veterans of the region's mines and garment factories, many of whom Harvan had known for forty or fifty years.