Andrew Querner’s &#8220The Bread with Honey&#8221

The Stan Terg mine, part of the Trepca complex, in northern Kosovo, has been in operation intermittently since the Middle Ages. Shuttered by the Kosovo war in 1998, the mine reopened in 2005 and has recently become a mirror for larger issues facing the young republic. In his series “The Bread with Honey,” the photographer Andrew Querner documents the Stan Terg miners and their quiet community. Many of the miners Querner photographed are in their sixties, and face forced retirement. They expressed serious concern that their pensions would not support their extended families. Nevertheless, the mine is still rich in lead, zinc, and silver; it has become, according to Querner, “a beacon of potential for the newly independent Kosovar state—a promise to deliver an economic independence to match (and perhaps guarantee) its newfound sovereignty.”