S.D. School of Mines, 1956-2024

In October I spoke at the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City. Thanks to the Department of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences for a wonderful day. I took a picture.

(This is not the picture; click the link above!)

Seven photos, the longest series I ever did, a fun experiment. Someday I'll fix the tilt in 1956, caused by a sine wave in 2014,* and I’ll square up 2014's extra panes.

As I shot in 2024, workers were once again finishing a building: the Nucor Mineral Industries building, profoundly reshaping the campus and presumably replacing my old office (behind 2014's white helix statue).

My daughter laughed when she saw this and doesn't know why she looked so sad in 2014. That was yet another rushed photo. Life is swift and long; field time is swift and short.

And Mines has art! The APEX Gallery's faculty exhibit was amazing, and mostly from non-art faculty. They said the music program is great now, and sure enough as I shot this the swing band was swinging. Engineers STEAMing. Who knew?

* 2004 was one of my first rephotos and way off, so I shot 2024 after 2014 but warped 2014 to 2024 and the rest to the warped 2014. So fixing 1956 will mean a near-total redo. Thanks to the SDSM&T Devereaux Library archives for the 1956 photos. And the belt was a great find: Tandy Leather downtown; who knew? Stamped it out as we watched. Robert Wellman Campbell, "S.D. School of Mines, 1956-2024," RSS Longa, 28 November 2024, PD via CC0 1.0.