Scott Herring has been capturing historic images for 40 years.

Not for his own benefit, but for others."The pictures have no value sitting in my files," said Herring, who grew up on Tamaqua's Dutch Hill.And now, the results of his lifetime passion for anthracite photography will become part of the permanent collection of a Lackawanna County museum.The images in Scott Herring's Hardcoal Chronicles 40th Anniversary show will be featured at the Anthracite Heritage Museum on Bald Mountain Road in Scranton, beginning Aug. 16.Nearly half of the show will remain as a permanent part of the main exhibition gallery.Herring launched the exhibit on June 13, 2013, selecting the Tamaqua Area Chamber of Commerce gallery because he wanted the celebration kickoff to take place in his hometown. It was billed as "The Homecoming."The Scranton show, however, is not a duplicate of the Tamaqua show or a later one in Pottsville."Roughly half of the Scranton show will display new panels," Herring said. "But even if you've seen part of the pictures before, please join all of us anyway for this show opening it's worth it just to see our Anthracite Heritage Museum, the largest and finest showcase of our region and people."Herring's priceless collection consists of almost 150,000 images that depict the mines, railroads, people and towns that not only forged a heritage and solidified a culture, but essentially built America.A few thousand of those pictures showcase scenes in the Tamaqua and Panther Valley area.Many of those images will be donated to the Tamaqua Area Historical Society Museum when that repository reopens next year.Those images, he says, belong to the people whose pride, work ethic and rich heritage have made the project special and meaningful.Herring's work is noncommercial. Instead, he has devoted his passion strictly to cultural enrichment, education and historical archives.Herring, 55, is proud of his Tamaqua roots. His grandmother was Dorothy Hassan of Pine Street, an early proponent of animal rights who worked side-by-side with Ruth Steinert in creating the Tamaqua SPCA.His grandfather, Quentin C. Hassan, operated Hassan's Cigar Store at the Five Points.He began his life quest of capturing Pennsylvania's coal regions in 1973 by taking pictures of the trains and mines of Tamaqua.Herring is the sixth man in the past 150 years, and many say the final one, to thoroughly document the coal regions of northeastern Pennsylvania. It is doubtful anyone can follow in his footsteps to the extent of Herring's mission and accomplishments simply because the subject matter has been depleted; the assets and resources have largely disappeared.Gone are the towering coal breakers, prolific strip mines and bootleg coal holes, and a once-burgeoning railroad industry that carried the black gold to market.In fact, due to the loss of the legendary anthracite railroads fully one-half of the cultural and industrial story and the rapid disappearance of anthracite cultural landscape evidence, it has been sadly impossible since 1976 for there to be another true anthracite photographer to succeed Herring.The Hardcoal Chronicles is the formal name of the body of work and has been in continuous use, along with the German name 'Starkkohlenfelder of Pennsylvania,' since January 1975, 13 months after the first image was made.Last year Herring relocated to Pennsylvania, moving to the Lehigh Valley area from Red Oak, Texas.