June 14, 2018
CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The West Virginia Division of Culture and History will feature The Family of Coal, an exhibit of portrait photographs by Thorney Lieberman, an architectural photographer and author, with Mike Riley at the Culture Center, State Capitol Complex in Charleston. The exhibit will open at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, June 20, 2018 in the balcony gallery of the Great Hall with a reception from 6 – 8 p.m. the following evening, Thursday, June 21. The reception is free and open to the public.
A native New Yorker, Lieberman has enjoyed a distinguished career photographing architecture. As the principal photographer for I.M. Pei & Partners, he has worked with many major architects in New York and across the country. After living in New York and Colorado, Lieberman moved to Charleston where his wife was born and raised. Intrigued to find himself amid "coal country," Lieberman set about exploring his new surroundings. These explorations resulted in 18 life-size photographic portraits of coal miners, often with their children. Two of the portraits earned him a Merit Award and the D. Gene Jordon Memorial award in the 2007 West Virginia Juried Exhibition. In this current exhibition, the original work has been updated with new images of Consol and Blackhawk miners photographed in mid-2018. Some of his previous works include Manhattan Lightscape (Abbeville Press 1990) and The West Virginia State Capitol Building – Second Edition (2017).
The exhibit will be on display until Monday, August 20, 2018 during regular Culture Center hours, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information about the exhibit, call Charles Morris, director of museums for the division, at (304) 558-0220 or Charles.W.Morris@wv.gov.
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