Review - William Gedney: Only the Lonely, 1955-1984

Hardcover | 10.5 x 9.5 inches | 160 pages | 160 duotone photographs | University of Texas Press, 2017 | Edited by Gilles Mora, Margaret Sartor, and Lisa McCarty

William Gedney’s work was once described as quiet poetry. I can’t think of a finer description of the photographer I’ve never met, but whose work has had a profound impact on my development as a photographer and understanding of photography in all its imperfections and limitations. Intimate is another word often used to describe his work, and although it truly is intimate, I worry that it has become something of a softball descriptor of work that is deeply complex and difficult to categorize. Only the Lonely provides us with a deeper dive into the expansive work of William Gedney. There are three distinct pieces of writing by the editors: “William Gedney, So Similar, So Different: Alone are the Lonely” (Gilles Mora), “Short Distances and Definite Places” (Margaret Sartor), and “Intimate Gestures: Handmade Books by William Gedney” (Lisa McCarty). The book is divided into eight sections of photographs: The Farm, 1955-1959, Brooklyn, 1955-1979, Kentucky, 1964, 1972, United States, 1964-1972, San Francisco, 1965-1967, India, 1969-1971 and 1980, Europe, 1974, and Gay Pride Parades, 1975-1983.

Only the Lonely, is the most recent significant work of this little known photographer. After his death in 1989, Gedney left the responsibility of his archive to Lee Friedlander, who has published dozens of books of his own work and is still actively making books, yet Gedney never lived to see his work in book form. Sean O’Hagan, who writes about photography for the Guardian, called Gedney a “pioneer of immersive documentary.” There has been somewhat of a resurgence in the work of  William Gedney, for which I’m incredibly thankful. In 2013, photographer Alec Soth published Iris Garden, a beautiful book of Gedney’s pictures combined with the writing of John Cage (now out of print). Before that, only one other book had been published dedicated solely to the work of William Gedney. In 1993, Duke University became the repository for 51.3 linear feet of Gedney’s work. Margaret Sartor, a photographer, writer, and teacher at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, was approached by the library and asked to put together an exhibit of Gedney’s work. In 2000, Sartor and Geoff Dyer coedited What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney (which quickly sold out and is also out of print).

William Gayle Gedney died on June 23, 1989 at the age 56. In his lifetime, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for photography (1966-67), a Fulbright Fellowship for photography in India (1969-71), a National Endowment for the Arts grant in photography (1975-76), and several other grants and fellowships. He had a show at the New York Museum of Modern Art (1968-69) as well as more than a dozen other exhibitions. I wrote about my desire for seeing Gedney’s Kentucky work come to fruition in book form exactly as he intended here.

In her essay “Short Distances and Definite Places,” Sartor writes of Gedney, “People trusted him. Moreover they trusted how he saw them.” This gets at the very heart of documentary and place-based work for me. It isn't enough to just earn the trust of folks who let you into their lives, although it is a critical and foundational step. Would that all of us in our documentary practice earn the trust of people to the extent that they trust how we see them. What a beautiful relationship to strive for and what a beautiful book to have as a reminder of its possibility.

William Gedney's Eastern Kentucky Photographs

One of the things I’m most fond of is seeing how other photographers and artists work. If I see a picture of an artist in their studio or workspace, my attention is usually drawn to the background where I find myself looking at bookcases, work tables, and other “stuff” in their creative space. I also truly enjoy behind-the-scenes snippets of how they work and how things come together. In that vein, I wanted to share a bit about a book project I’ve been working on for some time now. It’s far from complete and very much an early draft. I have no publisher and real idea of the market interest in a book like this. There is still a good deal of text to write for the book. Nonetheless, I think it would make a wonderful book, so I plan to move forward.

I had never seen a William Gedney photograph before beginning classwork at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. Gedney’s work is archived at Duke’s Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. One of our classes visited the archive and I was immediately taken with his photographs. What’s most striking to me about Gedney is that he went to eastern Kentucky at a time when most of the pictures being made there were being used to highlight and call attention to poverty. What’s more is that he only made two trips there in 1964 and 1972, spending a total of 29 days in Kentucky. Yet many believe, as do I, that this is some of the strongest work of his career. He quickly became a part of the Cornett family and worked amongst them with a meticulous, quiet familiarity shown in the photographs he made there.

In the early 1960’s, Appalachia saw a flood of photographers, news crews, and filmmakers (think Charles Kuralt’s Christmas in Appalachia circa 1964) come into the hills and hollers as part of the War on Poverty campaign. By and large, they formed a disparaging visual narrative of the place I was born and raised. Yet somehow, William Gedney transcended that tendency and instead made photographs of grace, beauty, and simple existence all the while capturing the real environs of his subjects. There must’ve been something about his spirit that caused him to see what others did not, would not, perhaps could not.

William Gedney died on June 23, 1989 at 56. In his lifetime, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for photography (1966-67), a Fulbright Fellowship for photography in India (1969-71), a National Endowment for the Arts grant in photography (1975-76), and several other grants and fellowships. He had a show at the New York Museum of Modern Art (1968-69) as well as more than a dozen other exhibitions. What surprised me about this is that Gedney never published a book. Four years after his death, in 1993, Duke University became the repository for 51.3 linear feet of Gedney’s work. Margaret Sartor, a photographer, writer, and teacher at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, was approached by the library and asked to put together an exhibit of Gedney’s work. In 2000, Sartor and Geoff Dyer coedited What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, which quickly sold out and is now out of print.

As years passed and my fascination with Gedney and his Kentucky photographs grew, I began spending time in the archive going through boxes and boxes of work prints, notebooks, and book dummies. It was here that I came across hand-sketched thumbnails (below) of an early draft for a book of his eastern Kentucky photographs. There were several pages of sketches, several of which listed the corresponding negative and contact sheet number, and it became clear that this was a book he wanted to make. He split the book into two parts – 1964 and 1972 – and included 80 photographs. Thanks to his notes, I was able to identify and locate 73 of the 80 pictures in the archive at Duke. The entire Gedney collection is currently being re-digitized and I hope to be able to identify the remaining seven pictures later this year. Including some of these sketches in the book will be a fascinating addition.

While working on this, I ordered and sequenced the images according to Gedney’s sketches and notes and created a couple of 11" x 17" contact sheets to study and understand his process a bit better. I also created a mock cover and used it to wrap my copy of Andre Kertesz: Paris, Autumn 1963, which incidentally is very similar in makeup with how I’d like to design the Kentucky book. It measures roughly 7.5" x 9.5", 80 pages, and was published by Flammarion in 2013.

I've consulted with Margaret Sartor, who was kind enough to invite me over to dinner earlier this year and along with her husband, Alex Harris, helped me think through some of the processes needed to make this book come to life. She has been instrumental in my learning about Gedney’s work. Lisa McCarty, curator of the Archives of Documentary Arts at Duke, has been incredibly supportive of this project and seeing it come to fruition.

So, if you’re a publisher, love the work of William Gedney, and want to see this book made, please drop me a line. I’d love to talk with you.

All three vertical photographs – William Gedney Collection, Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. All other photographs and content - ©2015 Roger May

Looking at Appalachia | William Gedney - Part Three

Exactly 40 years ago this week, William Gedney returned to the hills of eastern Kentucky to reconnect with the Cornett family (pictured above with Gedney) whom he had spent more than a week with in 1964 (see below). The relationship between Gedney and the Cornetts is described in this beautiful vignette from What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney coedited by Margaret Sartor and Geoff Dyer:

"We though of him as one of our kids. He was just a plain person, like us. At the store, Bill'd say to the kids, 'Do you want an ice cream? If you do, get one.' He wouldn't say, 'Go on, get an ice cream.' You could get along with him." On the day Gedney arrived, he told Willie he would sleep on the floor and offered to pay two dollars a day for his keep. Willie refused the money, but at the end of Gedney's eleven-day visit, found exactly twenty-two dollars left behind. After telling me this story in the spring of 1998, the still lively, white-haired Willy added casually, "He could'be come and stayed a lifetime, it would've been OK with me."

Thirty-five pages of What Was True are dedicated to Gedney's time in Kentucky, including twenty-seven photographs (ten from 1964 and seventeen from 1972) and snippets of correspondence with Vivian Cornett. Sartor continues:

"The Cornetts remained in touch with Gedney for more than fifteen years. Their letters, most of them from Vivian, were among his belongings when he died. Over the years, he sent them prints and sometimes money. Vivian wrote back with family news and included school photos of the children. On one particular occasion, fulfilling a promise made to himself, Gedney sent Willie and Vivian exactly half of the seventy dollars earned from selling his first Kentucky photograph, the one of the girls peeling potatoes in the kitchen."

Three girls in kitchen, appeared on the cover of the Fall 1996 issue of DoubleTake.

"The excerpt published here is from the trips Bill made to eastern Kentucky in the 1960s and 70s. There he spent most of his time photographing one extended family. In his life in Brooklyn, Bill was an eccentric; he was even described as a kind of recluse by some of his friends. But as a photographer he made profound connections with the people he photographed. In these Kentucky photographs we can see that he is fully engaged with these hill people, with the lives played out in and around their cars and porches. The sensuality in these pictures reminds us of our sameness and, in fact, what is beautiful about our sameness." - Thomas Roma, DoubleTake, Fall 1996

"For several years now, I have looked through thousands of William Gedney's photographs, read his letters, scanned his appointment books and grant applications, studied his notebooks and his journals. In my mind, I hear his voice, deep and articulate. After some time, I could also hear the silence, what was held back, hints of an unreachable place. In the photographs, this tension is part of their power - the cup half-empty. And the body revealing what the heart might want - and want to hide." Margaret Sartor, What Was True

All black and white images (11) - William Gedney Collection, Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

William Gedney's work never ceases to command my attention. It isn't forceful, overbearing, or gimmicky. He presents grace, beauty, and humanity in a people often marginalized and dismissed. These are things that are important to me, qualities he captured from the people and place that means so much to me. He didn't shy away from poverty or hardscrabble existence, instead he chose not to make it the focus of his work. Because of that, we get to see something so few who make photographs in Appalachia can show us. By pressing in close enough, quietly enough, in the words of Thomas Roma, he captured the beauty of our sameness.

Editor's Note: I'd like to thank Margaret Sartor for her time and willingness to answer my barrage of questions about William Gedney. Additionally, I would like to thank David Pavelich, Head of Research Services, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University for his assistance in securing permission to use the images in this series as well as Amy McDonald, Assistant University Archivist, who cheerfully assisted me with box after box of Gedney's prints, contact sheets, and notes. Last, but certainly not least, huge thanks to Chris Sims at the Center for Documentary Studies for the generous, long-term loan of What Was True.

Elsewhere: Ahorn Magazine featured some of Gedney's work here. It's well worth a look.

Looking at Appalachia | William Gedney - Part Two

I had the good fortune of having coffee with Margaret Sartor back in June at the Nasher Museum on the campus of Duke University. She generously agreed to meet with me and talk about the work of William Gedney and her experience researching it for her book, co-edited by Geoff Dyer, What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. Sartor is a photographer, writer, and teacher at Duke University and has curated exhibitions of photography at the International Center for Photography in New York, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

One of the most pressing questions I've had about Gedney's work in Appalachia has simply been, why? Why Appalachia? I'm fascinated by his choice to leave New York and wander into eastern Kentucky to make photographs. I asked Sartor about this. She explained that he was very close to his grandparents, who were farmers in upstate New York. Some of his earliest photographic work was centered on his grandparents and it’s likely that his connection to them - the life they led, the simplicity of the land, the beauty of place, ultimately drew him to Kentucky.

To Sartor, Gedney was very interested in the authenticity of people and place. He had very little patience for inauthenticity or pretension (artistic or otherwise). He worked very unobtrusively, rarely confronting his subjects head on or imposing himself upon the situation.

"We can't pinpoint why we keep looking at an image but if we keep coming back, you know that it's something beyond the surface, you know, that somehow in describing the surface, the photographer has managed to get at something deeper...and really invisible." - Margaret Sartor

We talked about the photograph above, simply titled Young girl. Next to Three girls in kitchen, this is my favorite William Gedney photograph. There is so much here. The girl's head slightly tilted back and to the side, wisps of hair in her hace, her set jaw, arms crossed, and those eyes. Her gaze speaks volumes to me. Sartor and I spoke at length about this photograph.

"Her defiance is something we recognize (perhaps as adolescents) - it's a spirit. It's something much more lively than self-conscious. She's showing a side of herself to Gedney, yet not letting him in. As photographers, we've been on both sides of the camera. We work hard to try to get at who the person really is. Gedney had a special way of capturing that electricity - how the subject and photographer work it out. It's interesting that he got that from her (that she presented it to him) and that he would see that part of her spirit and not be looking for something else." - Margaret Sartor

Gedney's Appalachia work is refreshing to me because it feels so incredibly real. Sartor noted that, "We keep looking because it (Gedney's work) feels so genuine." I couldn't agree more. His unassuming presence allowed him to capture moments so obviously absent from most of the work I've seen from Appalachia, that one has to wonder why so few photographs like this exist. Certainly at the time he was photographing in Appalachia, there was a stream of imagery coming out of there that I feel shaped the way we look at Appalachia today. For me, Gedney chose to see and show the deeper humanity of my home. How he saw the world, my world, challenges me to be truer, to be more authentic when I work.

Following are more of my selections from the Gedney collection that, for me, show the depth of the sort of quiet poetry he seemed to be working out (another great insight from Margaret Sartor).

All photographs - William Gedney Collection, Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.