The Artwork of Documentary Photography: Rebecca Kiger

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, A prepare approaches East Palestine October seventh, 2023. Eight months prior, a poisonous prepare derailment contaminated the city’s air, water, and soil. The cleanup from the prepare derailment and managed burn continues to today.

The photographers we’re that includes over the subsequent few days are distinctive documentary photographers and photojournalists. What actually stands out is their capability to seize actuality and translate it into one thing poetic and highly effective.

They are profitable due to their extraordinary powers of notion. They usually work beneath the hardest of circumstances and are pressured to make fast choices on framing, gentle and gesture. They sort out topics which are delicate and complicated.  Their pictures are sometimes hypnotic, mysterious and emotional.

These photographers are profitable as a result of they’re all the time in control of the scene. They have a transparent imaginative and prescient of what they need to say. And they see issues others miss.

When I used to be a reporter, I labored with among the finest photojournalists and documentary photographers within the enterprise. What struck me was how current they
have been, how they linked with folks. I used to be all the time amazed after we would work an enormous crowd, they may spot the one who would open up, who had a gripping story to inform.

With so many difficult points going through us, it appears essential to have probing photographers bringing readability to those debates.

Rebecca Kiger is a documentary photographer and the present Knight Fellow at Ohio University. She has led year-long images tasks in excessive colleges within the Rust Belt of Appalachian Ohio by the Rural Arts Collaborative and the Ohio Arts Council. Through an extra grant from the Center for Contemporary Documentation, she led college students by an exploration of environmental points of their group. Her challenge on the poisonous prepare derailment in East Palestine, Ohio was additionally made attainable by help from Center. Her pictures appeared within the Washington Post and Time. The story acquired awards from POY, the Society of Environmental Journalists, NY Press Club, and World Press Photo.

Instagram: @rebecca_kiger

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, A bulldozer drops contaminated soil right into a truck in East Palestine on October 16, 2023. As of March 2025, the EPA had overseen the elimination of 222,000 tons of contaminated soil and 74 million gallons of impacted water. 

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, Rick Tsai, an East Palestine resident, walks in Sulphur Run close to the prepare derailment web site on August 7, 2023. He first waded within the creeks working from the derailment web site in an try and assuage his spouse’s fears of chemical contamination. He was unwell for weeks afterward. He started revisiting the creeks commonly, carrying protecting gear and disturbing the sediment with a stick with movie the oily sheen that will emerge, posting the movies to his YouTube channel. He believes the EPA has misled East Palestine residents in regards to the city’s security. In December 2023, he introduced he was working for congress in Ohio’s sixth district however later misplaced within the election.

Q: Congratulations in your World Press Photo Award and different awards. Tell us a bit in regards to the challenge. What have been the primary days after the derailment like?

RK: When I arrived in East Palestine, I couldn’t consider the odor that hung within the air. This was just some days after the “controlled burn” wherein the poisonous chemical compounds from the derailed vehicles have been leaked after which burned, an act that was deemed pointless after a National Transportation Safety Board investigation.

I used to be sick after my preliminary reporting, and that was eight days after the derailment, just a few days after the burn. When I say ’sick’, I imply my lungs felt like that they had lead in them, or slightly, I felt a weight in my chest, which made respiration tougher

Folks might keep in mind the visuals of the explosion wherein a large black cloud emanated from and coated the city. The air pollution then proceeded emigrate throughout 16 states, even into Canada. Residents have been evacuated from the city however have been allowed to return a few days after the burn.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, A robotic canine utilized by contractors to measure air high quality in culverts beneath East Palestine’s downtown previous to sending in employees to take away sediment and particles, on Nov. 12.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, Robin Seman and 4 of her youngsters throughout a second of silence at an occasion marking the six month anniversary of the prepare derailment, as featured on the quilt of TIME’s particular report on the aftermath of the chemical spill.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, Zella Blythe, 3, performs with bubbles on the Summer Kickoff sponsored by Norfolk Southern at East Palestine City Park on June 11. Zella’s father was elected to Village Council that November.
Lisa Mahoney holds three useless child birds she discovered on a stroll round East Palestine. She nearly by no means discovered useless child birds round city in earlier years; she and her husband Dave discovered about 20 this 12 months.

Q: There is an intimacy to your pictures. It’s clear you didn’t simply parachute in. For instance, the {photograph} of the younger woman promoting lemonade. Can you inform us how that {photograph} took place?

RK: This is a avenue I drove down many instances throughout my 12 months in East Palestine, as a result of it’s as near the poisonous prepare derailment web site as you may get. When I drove down sooner or later in August, I noticed 8-year-old LaBrea Letson promoting lemonade, sitting adjoining to the remediation web site. I couldn’t consider the irony, shock, and concern. Before I photographed LaBrea, I went into the home and spoke together with her grandmother Jennifer to ensure it was OK that I took pictures. That’s after I discovered that she watches each Labrea and her little brother whereas their mom (her daughter) is waitressing.

While I used to be photographing, I observed the “What’s in your air?” van circling the block. The van, operated by a Norfolk Southern contractor, checks the air for hazardous chemical compounds. These vans circled the derailment web site throughout parts of the remediation. I crossed my fingers and hoped it will go once more.

LaBrea’s mom Daisy wasn’t comfy together with her daughter spending time close to the derailment web site, however Jennifer was the one choice for childcare whereas Daisy labored as a waitress. LaBrea had hoped to save lots of sufficient cash from her lemonade gross sales to purchase a pet; in the end she earned $678, primarily from employees on the web site. Unfortunately, well being points have since put an excessive amount of pressure on the Letson household so as to add the accountability of a brand new pet—the household believes the problems have been exacerbated by chemical publicity. For Christmas, LeBrea acquired a snow-cone machine. She hopes to make use of it this summer time to attempt once more to boost cash for a pet.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment,A panel of witnesses from academia, labor, and the railway trade is sworn in on the National Transportation Safety Board hearings in East Palestine’s highschool gymnasium on June 23. The investigation was finalized June 25, 2024 and the NTSB revealed that the managed burn of the poisonous supplies had been pointless. Norfolk Southern had withheld the data in February 2023 from the Village leaders liable for the choice to leak and ignite the chemical compounds.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment,Residents line as much as vote at First Church of Christ in East Palestine on Nov. 7.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, One Year After the Derailment, Jess Conard and her husband Chad with their 4-year-old son Rhys. After weeks of fixed coughing, Rhys started to have issue respiration sooner or later in May, and Jess rushed him to the hospital. He was recognized with gentle persistent bronchial asthma, and now makes use of the inhaler twice a day. Jess grew to become the Appalachia Director for the environmental group Beyond Plastics in August, 2023.

Q: Tell us about your self, the place you grew up, what drew you to images? You usually point out your roots in Appalachia. How does that affect your images? How does working with college students affect your work?

While I used to be born in Illinois and spent some early years in Indiana, when my mother and father had the possibility, they moved dwelling to WV. I used to be round 4 years previous. I beloved pictures after I was a baby. I didn’t totally notice that I loved taking them till I met Benita Keller, who was my B&W I photograph professor at Shepherd College.

During my early years of school, I used to be uncovered to nice photographers each at school and thru books discovered on the library cabinets – like Emmet Gowin: Photographs. I believe after I noticed work made by photographers like Gowin, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nan Goldin, Shelby Lee Adams, and so forth. I spotted that there was a poetic, revealing, and generally haunting method of displaying the world. I needed to have the ability to converse their language.

Regarding working with youth, I need to be the perfect grownup I may be for the youthful model of myself. One of my biggest motivations is giving again and giving a leg up due to the generosity shared by so many photographers I’ve met alongside the best way.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, Eight-year-old LaBrea Letson sells lemonade—made with bottled water—outdoors her grandmother Jennifer’s dwelling close to the derailment web site. The van passing by, operated by a Norfolk Southern contractor, checks the air for hazardous chemical compounds. LaBrea’s mom Daisy wasn’t comfy together with her daughter’s spending time close to the derailment web site, however Jennifer was the one choice for childcare whereas Daisy labored as a waitress. LaBrea had hoped to save lots of sufficient cash from her lemonade gross sales to purchase a pet; in the end she earned $678, primarily from employees on the web site. Unfortunately, well being points have since put an excessive amount of pressure on the Letson household so as to add the accountability of a brand new pet—the household believes the problems have been exacerbated by chemical publicity.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, East Palestine High School on the Homecoming dance within the faculty’s gymnasium on September 23, 2024.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, Spectators watch Fourth of July fireworks in East Palestine City Park, sponsored by the fireplace division. Assistant Chief Rick Gorby, who initially managed the response on the night time of the poisonous prepare derailment, oversaw the occasion. “East Palestine is not a dying city,” he mentioned. “There are more people present here tonight than we’ve ever had.”

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine, Jonathan Strazinsky, a member of the Gold Spike Garden Railroad Club, on the membership’s annual prepare show at East Palestine’s Snowflake Festival at First Church of Christ on Dec. 2, 2023. Norfolk Southern helped pay for the show together with native companies. “Some people didn’t want to support it because it’s train-related,” says the membership’s founding member and president David Peters. “As far as Norfolk Southern is concerned, they’re going above and beyond to do what’s right.” *In 2024, Norfolk Southern reneged on a number of guarantees that they had made to the Village by a gentleman’s settlement (handshakes), together with the constructing of a $20,000,000 first responder coaching heart, which might have ready volunteer firefighters and different first responders within the area for chemical disasters just like the one which befell in East Palestine.

© Rebecca Kiger, East Palestine