CARLI Digital Collections Featured Image: Abandoned strip mine filled with water

This aerial view of a pre-reclamation strip mine was recorded in 1968 in Perry County, Illinois, by C. William "Doc" Horrell (1918-1989), a freelance photographer and former faculty member at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Horrell began taking photographs when his mother gave him a camera for graduation from high school in his hometown of Anna, Illinois. An alumnus of Southern Illinois Normal University (later SIUC), Doc headed the school’s Photographic Services from 1949-1958. In 1959 he accepted a faculty position in the Printing and Photography department (later Cinema and Photography), teaching classes in photojournalism, portraiture, documentary photography, and scientific photography until his retirement in 1983.

The digital collection contains 768 of Horrell’s photographs documenting the life and work of coal miners and the coal industry in Southern Illinois. His images of "the land between the rivers" helped to strengthen and preserve the regional identity of this area.

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