How Mining Shaped American Photography from the Start

Aperture publishes a long-read essay connecting the history of American photography to the mining industry, covering figures from Timothy H. O'Sullivan shooting Nevada's Comstock Lode in 1868 to Margaret Bourke-White at Otis Steel around 1927-28. The piece grounds early photographic chemistry in silver and gold extraction, and tracks how portrait and landscape genres developed around mining sites across the West.