This weekend the Northern Hills town of Lead is observing its annual Neutrino Day. Neutrino Day is a celebration of science – and marks the transition of Lead from a small town of gold-miners to a community that is host to some of the world’s top scientists.
Back when the deep underground tunnels of Homestake were used for mining gold the work space was dark and dingy. Not these days – today many of those tunnels are sparkling clean and house expensive high-tech scientific research equipment.
Local photographer and University Professor Steve Babbitt says he captured the evolution of the space on film.
“I’ve had the opportunity and the pleasure to photograph the transition of that space on the 4850 level. Some of the photos that I will be showing are documents of what the space looks like. But some of them are artistic interpretations of how I imagine things that can’t be seen – if you could see them,” says Babbitt.
Babbitt says he worked on chronicling the transition of the mine into a lab along with Sanford Lab media specialist Matt Kapust. Babbitt says he is showing the photographs at the Deadwood/Lead Arts Council this weekend at the Into The Dark: Artists Exploring Dark Matter exhibit. The exhibit is in correlation with Lead’s annual Neutrino Day celebration.