Choosing Sides and a Camera
Builder Levy grew up thinking the world could be — had to be — a better place. How he would do his part was almost predetermined. He grew up in a family of what would now be called progressives. He called them Mom, Dad and Aunt Dolly. One day, bored, he put on one of his father’s records, “Which Side Are You On?” It entranced him.
“It was very emotional music,” Mr. Levy, 71, recalled. “The melody was piercing. And the words! It was talking about how the world needed to be changed and there was a struggle going on. It was about the Harlan County coal miners strike in the 1930s.”
That childhood epiphany would lead him to spend decades photographing coal country in Appalachia, where generations of men descended into mines, doing backbreaking, hazardous work. And the conditions they encountered above ground — trying to lift their families from poverty through union jobs that often drew the ire of their employers — proved to be just as daunting. But Mr. Levy felt called to do this #documentary work in his free time and summers because he, too, believed in organized labor, being a member for the United Federation of Teachers who worked in New York City’s public schools for 35 years.
▻http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQBHzzGrSPk
#photograpy #Builder_Levy #union #mines #