The San Juan College Humanities Wing Gallery is currently featuring the works of the fall 2003 honors class “Mining Chronicles: Two Viewpoints.” On display are black and white photographs from nine of the students in the class. The show will hang through March 5.

Taught by James Burgess and Dr. Bob Hokom, the class was a literary and photographic seminar that explored hard rock mining and how the geographic, social, economic and legal forces prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries impacted individuals.

Students read a range of texts and applied the message to photographic interpretation. Subject matter includes mining towns, abandoned churches, derelict homes, old trains, models in period costume and more.

Photos are all accompanied by appropriate text from the books used in the class:

• Rocky Mountain Mining Camps: The Urban Frontier by Duane A. Smith;
• Life of an Ordinary Woman by Anne Ellis;
• Never Come Down by Michelle Black;
• In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains by Robert Cooperman; and
• Black Range Tales by James A. McKenna.

Students whose works are display are Sabrina Hawkins, Jim Bentley, Linda Bentley, Jack Kant, Ken MacAdams, Adam Telford, Sheena Telford, Bond Kinney and Linda Mascarenas.

The gallery is located at the top of the stairs in the new West Classroom Complex, the upper level of the remodeled gymnasium on the College’s main campus.