In former times, the Stan Terg mine located in Trepca, Kosovo was the jewel of a giant Yugoslavian mining conglomerate. Two thousand miners supplied factories and smelters throughout what is now independent Kosovo with lead, zinc, and gold, among many other metals. Power struggles in the 1990s which resulted in the break-up of Yugoslavia and culminated in Kosovo's civil war of 1999, crippled the mining operation. Since the end of the war Stan Terg has little more than survived, the victim of fallout from tensions between Kosovo's Serbian and Albanian population, political tensions between Kosovo and Serbia, and post-independence growing pains.

Over time, Stan Terg has come to reflect the history of the region's ethno-political strains. Often to the detriment of the operation itself, the forces at the mine's helm also tended to hold regional control. As a photographer, this relationship offered a point of entry to explore this ongoing struggle for power through the experience of the mine's current gatekeepers and their small town. And while the mine might serve as metaphor for the larger issues of the day, it has also come to represent the potential for an economic independence, a symbol of hope that, in my experience, embodies the driving sentiment of Kosovo's 1.8 million people.