Picturing Labor: A Visual Ethnography of the Coal Mine Labor Process

Coal mining was among the most dangerous, physically demanding, and socially consequential forms of industrial labor in American history. In Picturing Labor, Eric Margolis applies visual ethnographic methods to the coal mine labor process, using photographs to document and analyze the embodied experience of work underground.

The article draws on historical photographs from Colorado coal mines to examine how the labor process was organized, how miners’ bodies were shaped and broken by their work, and how the physical environment of the mine structured social relations among workers. Margolis reads these images not as simple records of working conditions but as complex texts that reveal the intersection of technology, human labor, and corporate power.

By treating photographs as ethnographic data, Margolis demonstrates how visual methods can capture dimensions of the labor process — the spatial arrangements, bodily postures, tools, and environmental conditions — that written accounts struggle to convey. The result is a richly detailed portrait of work that was central to American industrialization yet remains poorly understood by most Americans.

Published in Visual Sociology Review, this article helped establish visual ethnography as a legitimate methodology for studying labor and industrial life.