Earl Dotter

Earl Dotter is the Photographer and Creator of the exhibit BADGES: A Memorial Tribute to Asbestos Workers.

Earl began photographing coal miners in 1969, then the most dangerous job in America. After which, he focused on other hazardous occupations in the USA. After 30 years of documentation, he created the exhibit and book THE QUIET SICKNESS: A Photographic Chronicle of Hazardous Work in America.

He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health since his appointment in 1999. In the year 2000, Dotter received an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to document commercial fishing. It had become our nation’s most dangerous trade.

After 9/11, he photographed the rescue recovery effort at Ground Zero. For that exhibit project, he received APHA’s Alice Hamilton Award. Dotter is currently touring his retrospective exhibit, LIFE’S WORK, A Fifty-Year Photographic Chronicle of Working in the U.S.A.

His recently published book of the same name is a companion to the touring exhibit.