Gelatin silver print
11" x 14" (Actual image size: 10" x 12")
 
 
Main entrance to Raspadskaya Coal Mine, Prokopievsk, Kuzbass region, Siberia. The biggest coal mine in Russia, they say, maybe in the world. (After a while, "biggest in the world" loses all perspective and meaning here.) The miners are on strike for better wages and living conditions. Salaries are the equivalent of $50 a month, not enough to feed their families. Though all are unaware of it now, the strike is a key factor in the chain of events leading to the USSR's implosion nine months later. March 1991.
 
 
Shepard Sherbell