Photographer #140: Song Chao ~ Photography Imaging

Song Chao, 1979, China, is a photographer with an interesting story. He started working in 1997 at a coal mine. While working there he started taking pictures of his fellow workers in 2001. He was uneducated and an amateur. His series Miners has been compared to the photographs of Richard Avedon, but Song was unaware of these images or any western photography at the time when he started taking the portraits. His photography focuses not only on the miners, but also the community that surrounds the miners, their families and the landscapes. His photographs have been exibited around the globe. The following images come from the series Miners I, Miners II and Coal-Mine Community.