Dear members of the Photoclub and friends,
A new exhibition by Helmut Schmidt has been organised in the Photocorner.
The location is Main building, near the elevators 7-9, and it will stay until
the end of August.
The title of the exhibition is "Poisonville".
Poisonville is the town figuring in Dashiell Hammetts 1927 thriller "red
harvest". Poison stands as a synonym not only for the situation in the town,
lawlessness, gangs, labour wars and filth, but also for the environmental
damage done by its main industry, mining.
Poisonville is the literary image of the town of Butte, Montana. At its height,
Butte was the richest town west of the Mississippi - Missouri. The name stands
for the reason of its wealth, the hill full of copper-silver ore which was
mined from the late 19th century on and called "the richest hill on earth". The
butte was and still is perforated with a maze of mine shafts up to a mile deep.
The mines and its wealth brought a building boom of equally rich architecture.
The influx of miners gave Butte a reputation as a wide-open town where any vice
was obtainable. Each mine has its story and its victims. The regular mining
disasters caused frequent riots, which were crushed with severe violence by
bringing in the national guard. The shaft mining was abandoned and replaced by
open pit mining, leaving abandoned one of the world's largest open mine pits
which now is filled with a highly poisonous heavy metal rich lake 800 meters
deep which threatens to spoil the ground water all around. A new pit was opened
close to it, but the mining already declined after 1917 and is a shadow of its
former self.
Today Butte is an half abandoned town full of majestic typical American brick
buildings, former mining company director mansions and Victorian villas, which
all figure in Hammett's novel. Most of the shops are empty, restaurants, hotels
and brothels closed, and a traffic jam will never occur any more on the
deserted streets. The villas are crumbling, the paint fading, and only the
satellite dishes and the stars and stripes hanging listlessly in the breeze
indicate those still occupied. And above all still tower the around 30
preserved mine rigs.
The morbid beauty of the town is far from undiscovered. Wim Wenders, known for
his melancholic and scenic movies and always searching for exceptional
locations with his big format camera has published several photo books also
including Butte and it is the scene of his movie "don't come knocking".
However, even such fame will never bring back the former glory.
(Helmut Schmidt, S04C24, 2461)
