My favourite social historian Darian Zam has been working over the last several years on a major project Coalfaces, a combination of an exhibition of posrtraits and 220 page book.
Darian has put countless hours into researching the largely unrecorded history of New Zealand products, business, commercial artists and more which he generously documents on his Long White Kid site. I'm personally indebted to Darian for the numerous occasions he has helped me with researching New Zealand comics and cartoonists, filling in gaps of information and bringing things to my attention.
I've cut and pasted Darian's words about his current project below, I heartily encourage anyone that might find it interesting to please help support his work.
Hi everyone,
Some of you are aware of the project I’ve been working on for the past six or so years. It’s called ‘Coalfaces’ and is an exhibition of portraits accompanied by a 220 page book. It was inspired by the time I spent living in an old mining town on the South Coast of NSW, Australia.
It couldn’t have been more different for someone who had resided in Sydney for nearly 20 years. Mount Kembla is notorious for being the site of Australia’s historically biggest industrial accident in which 95 people died.
As such, most of the focus has been on the disaster and not so much what life was like afterwards. I have completed work based on the life stories of fifteen local elderly people and their memories of growing up there in the aftermath of that terrible tragedy.
I’m passionate about recording the stories of older people before the information disappears for good.
I was hoping that I’d win the first inaugural local history ward in September and use the prize money to print the manuscript – but it wasn’t to be, unfortunately. So now I'm raising funds to print my book and stage my exhibition of portraits at the Wollongong City Art Gallery – which opens on Saturday 11th of March 2017. I'm now nearly halfway to my goal but it has taken ten weeks thus far and time is quickly running out.
There’s a preview of the book here. You can sponsor me for as little as one dollar a week; I need to find around 70 more five dollar sponsors to make my goal by March. There's a range of rewards listed at my Patreon site for different price points.
Many people have expressed they are more comfortable making a one-off direct donation rather than sign up to Patreon - and this can be easily done via Paypal with 4 major cards. Or alternately, by bank deposit (AU or NZ).
Thanks so much for considering supporting Coalfaces, which will probably be my major life project as a social historian (mainly because I never intend to spend this long on something ever again!)
Funds raised will be used to pay for shipping, printing, the opening and legal deposit commitments.
Best regards, dz
