Coal Mine - West Virginia 1930 1936

Irwin D. Hoffman made this print of a West Virginia coal mine in 1930. It’s all inky darks and smeared lights, created, I imagine, with lithographic crayon, smudging and hatching to build up tone. The men are hunched, toiling, their bodies rounded by the weight of labour. You can almost feel the coal dust on their skin and the damp, heavy air in their lungs. I wonder what Hoffman felt when he made this, documenting these lives. Did he feel like a voyeur, an advocate, or simply an artist drawn to the drama of the scene? There's a stark, unforgiving quality to the image. It reminds me of Kathe Kollwitz's prints, that same commitment to depicting the lives of working people with such unflinching honesty and directness. It’s a form of expression, rooted in the body, that seeks to convey the emotional and material realities of existence. It’s a conversation that has been going on in art for centuries.