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Photographer, artist and former educator Arthur Miller takes photos from his collection to walls of Breaker Brewing Company Wilkes Barre TWP. PA. Luzerne County
Parsons native Arthur Miller started collecting old photographs as a high school student in the early ’60s. He’d visit antique stores and Salvation Army locations to hunt for photos of coal miners, coal breakers and other subjects related to the industry. As he got older, Miller expanded his hunt to glass negatives and original prints. He estimates his collection of negatives at over 5,000 with a majority of the images taken locally.

“My father was born in 1898,” Miller said.” When he was 11, he went to work as a breaker boy and he stayed in the mines his whole life; I don’t think he ever worked outside of the mines. His father before him was a coal miner and his father before him was a coal miner, originally from England. That’s the main reason, but of course, coal was the valley. It was the economic...

FROM THE WYOMING VALLEY TO AFRICA, WITH PRIDE
ONE AFTERNOON, A U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT TRUCK PULLED INTO THE BREAKER BREWING COMPANY PARKING LOT ON NORTHAMPTON STREET IN WILKES-BARRE TWP.Government workers went into the brewery, expertly dismounted a 24-by-36-inch matted, glazed and framed piece of digital photographic art from the brewery wall and lovingly crated it for the first leg of its trip to Burkina Fasou, West Africa, where it will be hung in the official residence of United States Ambassador Sandra E. Clark.

It was a proud moment for the creator, 75-year-old artist Arthur Miller. Commercial photography was a livelihood for Miller for decades, but not a passion.

“I really did commercial work to support my interest in art,” he said in an interview one afternoon at Breaker Brewing Company, where his photographic art is on permanent display.

The artwork Clark selected is described as “a semi-impressionistic view of Frances Slocum State Park, Luzerne...