LIBRARY FREE EVENT
Join us January 29, 2025, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM in Thompson Library Room 165 for Raymond Thompson's presentation on the Appalachian Ghost: A Photographic Reimagining of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster.
Raymond Thompson, Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, will discuss, "Appalachian Ghost: A Photographic Reimagining of the Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster." This event is free and open to the public.
In the 1930s, near Fayetteville, West Virginia, 5,000 workers traveled to the area to work on a hydroelectric dam project. Two-thirds of these workers were Black. An estimated 2,900 laborers worked underground to dig a three-mile tunnel while exposed to silica dust. Clouds of silica dust overwhelming the workers due to improper construction techniques led to unsafe working conditions, causing an estimated 764 deaths. This story is shallowly buried beneath the West Virginia landscape, with very little to mark the incident. Appalachian Ghosts is a visual reexamination of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster.
Raymond Thompson is an artist, educator, and journalist based in Austin, Texas. He is an incoming Assistant Professor of Photojournalism at The University of Texas at Austin. He has a MFA in photography from West Virginia University. He received his masters degree from The University of Texas at Austin in journalism and graduated from the University of Mary Washington with a BA is American Studies. He received the 2020 Lenscratch Student Prize. He has worked as a freelance photographer for The New York Times, ACLU, Politico, NPR, The Nature Conservancy, The Intercept, NBC News, Propublica, WBEZ, Google, Merrell and the Associated Press.
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