The Quiet Sickness: A Photographic Chronicle of Hazardous Work in America

Resources

January 30 through May 25, 2012

Earl Dotter is an award-winning photojournalist with a lifelong commitment to documenting American workers. Beginning in the Appalachian coalfields in the 1970s and continuing today, he has put a human face on those who labor in dangerous and unhealthy conditions over a wide range of occupations across the United States. He follows in the tradition of such great American documentary photographers as Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and W. Eugene Smith.

The Quiet Sickness is drawn from Dotter’s large archive of black and white photographs documenting workers in the mining, fishing, agriculture, textile, health care, and construction industries, among others. While demonstrating improvements in workplace safety over the past 40 years, Dotter’s photographs also suggest that many workers continue to work in environments that are not safe. Collectively, they make the case for protecting the health of all working people, as well as speak to the dignity and self-respect of the individual worker in America.

The Quiet Sickness exhibition installation

As visitors move through the installation, the ambience is stark and contrasting with displays of black and white photos on white walls and a dark ceiling and floor.

The black and white photographs document workers in the mining, fishing, agriculture, textile, health care, and construction industries, among others.

At the beginning of the Quiet Sickness exhibition installation, there is a display that explains the connection of these workers and the implementation of NIOSH.

While demonstrating improvements in workplace safety over the past 40 years, Dotter's photographs also suggest that many workers continue to work in environments that are not safe.

Collectively, they make the case for protecting the health of all working people, as well as speak to the dignity and self-respect of the individual worker in America.

Spending a shift in a 30-inch seam low coal mine, this coal cutting machine operator remarked, "It's a bit like working under your kitchen table all day." Logan County, West Virginia (1976)