In the midst of the recession, I have been driven to document the struggles of ordinary people against extraordinary odds. Over 150 years since the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, a new wave of prospectors has rushed to California, desperate to find gold to sustain them until the job market improves. This body of work documents the re-emergence of gold prospectors in California, explores recent legislation that threatens their way of life and examines California’s identity as “The Golden State.”
The miners here—recent layoffs, veterans, retirees, ex-convicts and freelancers—are dependent on the income they derive from prospecting. Selling an ounce of gold at its now all-time high market rate of $1300+/oz. provides them with hope for survival.
This is a study of fierce individuals living on the margin, examining the irony of their hardship, alongside images of gold souvenir shops, businesses and streets of mainstream society named to celebrate gold mining history in the state. These gold prospectors have fled a global economy based largely on abstract forces in order to develop a measure of self-reliance, as modern-day pioneers on a search for something concrete. Taking a gamble, they work day after day in the searing heat of summer and bone-penetrating chill of winter, in dangerously rugged terrain, to eke out an existence.
SB 670, passed August 6, 2009, banned suction dredging—the most productive method for prospecting gold—pending an already-delayed review of its environmental impact. This law has decimated the gold prospecting community, forcing miners to seek alternate forms of economic relief, shuttering mining supply stores and reducing peripheral support to tourist businesses in The Golden State—drastically impacting the state’s economy and interstate commerce.
"The New ‘49ers” doesn’t simply offer a story of people digging for gold. These photographs examine the irony of the hardship of these prospectors, alongside images of gold souvenir shops, businesses and streets named to celebrate California’s gold mining history. It represents a timeless struggle for survival that speaks volumes about the social, political and environmental challenges of life in the early 21st Century.
