Following the national energy crises of the early 1970s, Montana Power built a coal-fired electrical generating plant. During the late 1960s and ’70s, as more stringent federal air-quality control laws were passed and as nationwide demand for cleaner low-sulfur coal increased, Montana Power expanded the mine for its own coal needs as well as for sales to utility companies in the Midwest.
In 1959, Northern Pacific (having switched from steam power to diesel) sold the coal leases, mines, and townsite to the Montana Power Company. The town of Colstrip was established in 1923 on top of some of the richest coal reserves in the world when the Northern Pacific Railroad began mining coal there for its steam locomotives. They become, finally, meditations on a ravaged landscape.įocusing on the region where I grew up, Colstrip, Montana (1982–85) is an extended study of one of the largest coal strip mines in North America, its coal-fired power plant, and the modern-day factory town that it surrounds. Beginning with the series Colstrip, Montana, and continuing through Minuteman Missile Sites, Waste Land, and “The Treasure State”: Montana 1889–1989, these four bodies of work begin to reveal an entire pattern of terrain transformed by human beings to serve their needs. These works explore a broad range of American environments, from mines and power plants to military installations, hazardous waste sites, and industrial and agricultural landscapes, examining the relationship of humans with their environment in the late twentieth century.
Since the early 1980s, my photographic work and mixed-media installations have investigated the contemporary American landscape as it reflects our culture and its most constructive and destructive energies.
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