© Colette Campbell-Jones

Stories From Underground, by Colette Campbell-Jones are visual reconstructions of oral histories from the coal miners of South Wales. Campbell-Jones was inspired to retell the stories of this vanishing culture after spending time with her husband’s family in the small town of Ton Pentre. “The underground imagery of the mine is profoundly mythical, an archetype associated with darkness, the unknown and the primordial,” she says. Using a self described “hybrid process” combining documents with manipulated digital imagery, Campbell-Jones is able to interweave the various stories and histories of the Welsh mining communities into individual narratives. The images reference drawing and printmaking process and appear almost as if they could be charcoal drawings. They will be on display at the photo-eye Gallery in Santa Fe from June 3 – July 30.