Looking at Appalachia

Looking at Appalachia | Rob Amberg - Part One

in ,

I had the great pleasure of spending several hours with Appalachian photographer Rob Amberg on a Sunday afternoon on the porch at Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. We visited for hours, talking about family, children, Appalachia, and photography among other things.

I asked Rob to write an essay to accompany some of his photographs for part one of this series, which focuses on more of his published book work. In the second part, I'll be sharing some of Rob's work from a more recent project. I'll also be announcing a chance to win a signed copy of his first book, Sodom Laurel Album.

Rob Amberg is the recipient of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Center for Documentary Studies, and others. In 2004, he had the honor of presenting Sodom Laurel Album at the Library of Congress.

Looking for Place

I believe that finding one’s place in the world is an individual’s most challenging question.  Where is that spot that best allows us to pursue our dreams and, at the same time, to address our responsibilities? Where is that place that makes us feel happy, at ease, challenged, productive, ourselves? For some of us that locus is no further than our own backyards. For others of us, finding our place takes groveling and searching before we come to where it just feels right. I have always fallen in with the groveling and searching crowd.

Photography is like that, too. On an immediate level, deciding where to stand and point the camera is the most basic of decisions a photographer makes. But before even that, because of photography’s dependence on an external reality, a photographer must decide where he is going to make his art. On what and who is he going to focus his attention? And what is he going to say?

Because I “ain’t from around here,” learning to maneuver through the intricacies and multiple layers of mountain culture involved a steep learning curve that I am still regularly reminded of, even after living here for almost forty years. It’s that depth of culture, and the power of the mountains themselves, that continues to spark my curiosity and keep me in place. True places, after all, are hard to find.

I have long considered myself a participant/observer. My desire to live in and fully experience the mountains and their people has matched my need to photograph them. Working with neighbors in their tobacco barns and tomato fields, attending their funerals and wakes, and playing a role in community functions not only serves to inform my photography, but more importantly, they link me to this place in an active way that goes far beyond simply observing. Firewood, spring water, gardens, animals, and farm maintenance are not only necessities that must be attended to, but also provide tangible evidence of work done when compared to the superficial nature of images on paper or computer screen, or theories discussed in the classroom.

It was images that first brought me to the mountains. Like many boys of my generation I was fascinated by the lives of people like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, especially as Walt Disney rendered them – heroic, brave, and romantic as they walked into those misty mountain sunsets.  So, in 1973, when I followed an uncle’s suggestion to move to Madison County, as he had a couple of years earlier, those stereotypes were what I brought with me and what I looked for when I arrived. And those real world stereotypes – the wrinkled faces, wizened mountaineers, and old women in doorways – were easy to find in Madison County and I photographed many of them.

Over time, I began to realize how much about this place I was failing to see, or choosing not to acknowledge. While I was honed in on the romance of the place, the other side of the Appalachian stereotype – the clannishness, violence, poverty, and abuse – was also on display. While land is one of the primary values of mountain life, there was often a blatant disregard for the land itself evidenced by straight-piping into creeks, trash piles on the sides of roads, and serious erosion from clear cuts and overuse of chemicals. The county was nicknamed Bloody Madison for a notorious Civil War massacre of thirteen men and boys accused of being “Unionists,” but the moniker had been punctuated over the years by acts of random and personal violence. The year before my arrival, a young, female VISTA worker had been brutally murdered in a remote section of the county.

I also began to see and understand other dynamics at play in Madison. There were hundreds of new people - retirees, young professionals, artists, Latino immigrants, and back-to-the-landers - moving into the county, buying land, and making commitments to place.  Concurrently, many of their local counterparts were moving out and off the land, wanting to be closer to the mainstream. For me as an observer, it became important to understand and document the county as a whole, as an evolving community, inclusive of a diversity of people and ideas, rather than one fixed in time.

Photography is about memory. Its unrivaled ability to capture detail offers the ability to recall the textures and feelings of the world around us at specific moments in time. For me, believability becomes an ongoing concern – a need to know that how I represent a subject speaks to the truth and can be understood as such by viewers. That is not to say that photographs are not ambivalent – they are – and the photographer, when presenting an image of place, is always at the mercy of the viewer’s experience, prejudices, and interpretation of an image. While it may be true that a picture never lies; it is equally true that a picture is worth a thousand words – words that often contradict each other in their meaning.

There was a week a couple of years ago when I was twice reminded of my “otherness” by people on radically different ends of the cultural, social, and economic spectrums. I had given an address at a conference, showing my work, and talking about changes in my mountain community. After the presentation, I was talking with a conference participant who accused me of fostering stereotypes and being “so Florida” in my thinking about Appalachia. This was ostensibly because I choose to embrace stereotypes in some of my images, rather than ignore them and because, in a general way, I thought the migration of new people into our community was a good thing, and that many of these people were “bright” and smart and brought new ideas and values into the community.

I mulled about his criticism in the following days, indulging my sensitivity to suggestions of misrepresentation in my work. It was summer and a couple of days later I was walking with my dogs on the road below our house, one of the few remaining dirt roads in the county.

I heard a truck coming up behind me and glanced back to see our community thug who had recently been released from jail. As he came alongside of me, slowing to keep pace with my gait, he looked over my clothing – shorts, tee shirt, white socks and sneakers – and said, quite derisively, “Are ye out fer yer little walk tonight, mister?” before driving off in a cloud of dust.

A few years prior to the construction of I-26 in Madison County, which I documented in my book The New Road, an archeological dig uncovered a fluted spear point that was carbon dated to 10,000 B.C. And we, and our neighbors, have found numerous arrowheads and pottery chards on our land after plowing our garden spots next to the creeks. I like to keep those facts in mind when I wrestle with the question, at what point do you really become part of a place? When do you stop being an “ain’t from around here,” a “fereigner,” an outsider, and become the neighbor who “lives up the creek?” Does it take a certain amount of time? Does it take working the soil, burying animals and family in it, stewarding it for the time, however long or brief, you are on it? Does it take thinking about, or representing, a place in one particular way? And for me as an observer, at what point do, or more accurately did, I realize I have the historical understanding and personal connection to this place to honestly and openly represent it in images?

Hard questions, all. And I’m uncertain I know any definitive answers to them. But I do think the definition of what it means to be “of a place” is changing, even in a relatively isolated spot such as Madison County, North Carolina. People have been migrating both in and out of the region forever, some staying longer than others, everyone leaving a footprint on the landscape. I don’t know how one judges one footprint to be more native or true than another.

I suspect our region is one of the most studied places on the planet. Writers, image-makers, ethnographers, statisticians, musicians, and many other “ers” and “ans” have been documenting Appalachia for hundreds of years, myself included. Each of us comes to the work from our own distinct point of view that includes our own baggage. Art engages the personal and the universal. It’s the nature of what artists do. But I’ve often thought that of all the work produced from this region, no writer or documentarian gets it completely right or represents it for the totality of place. But like pieces of a puzzle, when taken together, those individual visions of people and place offer a collective truth that begins to resemble where I live and work.

Rob Amberg November 14, 2012

 

All photographs and essay “Looking for Place” © Rob Amberg. All photographs are from Sodom Laurel Album and The New Road.

Looking at Appalachia | Shelby Lee Adams - Part One

in ,

The next photographer featured in the series Looking at Appalachia is Shelby Lee Adams. Shelby contacted me via Facebook last month and was kind enough to agree to collaborate on this series. After nearly three hours of phone calls and many email exchanges, he wrote the following essay, published here for the first time.

Shelby Lee Adams' photography has been published in four monographs - Appalachian Portraits (1993), Appalachian Legacy (1998), Appalachian Lives (2003), and Salt & Truth (2011). He has received numerous grants and awards, most recently a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010.

The Work of Looking

I was born and raised in a holler in Eastern Kentucky, lived and grew up in the middle part of Johnson’s Fork, in Letcher County, Kentucky. My families, on both sides, were farmers. One grandpa was also a timber man and the other a teacher. Neither of my grandfathers worked in the mines, but we knew many miners and discussed their lives and working conditions. Two of my uncles were doctors - one became disabled after serving throughout World War II. I became a part time unofficial medical assistant to the other uncle when he went into the hollers making house calls. My uncle Doc Lundy was a great resource and introduction. The mountain people loved him; he greatly appreciated their openness, sense of humor and generosity of spirit. We’d go out and visit, riding in his Willis Jeep. He loved the people and I think that transferred over to me. He was sort of my childhood mentor and helped introduce me to the mountain culture. Perhaps the earthiest and richest cultural view is in the hollows. My father and others didn’t see the culture the way my uncle did, so there was always this difference in my own family. It may explain why I photograph the way I do, in a direct, straightforward manner, working with a cumbersome view camera, expressing some tensions and divisions within the photographic compositions.

I think of my work as an insider’s view even though I now live in Massachusetts, making long-term return visits. Similar to how I grew up traveling with my parents, going back and forth with my father’s many jobs, but always returning to Johnson’s Fork. When your blood’s connected, and you're born and raised in a place, you’re always connected. My work is all done by personal introductions. I’ve never worked through agencies like VISTA, the Peace Corps, or government welfare offices; always by personal introductions and word of mouth. That’s how I’ve worked for close to 40 years now. I say that with pride.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was in the news; it was a big deal in our region. LOOK, LIFE, The Saturday Evening Post, and Charles Kuralt’s, famous program, “On the Road,” among others were all doing work and stories in different parts of Appalachia. I attended high school from 1964 through 1968. My uncle would call from his office with inquires he received from the media requesting introductions and I would gladly show people around after school. They told us when we first together we would all receive pictures within a month or two, further, adding how proud they were to be with us.

I soon regretted sharing our rural life with some photojournalists. When I read and saw examples of the essays done, I felt betrayed. They wrote degrading descriptions about our people and homes. For example, a home was referred to as "a run down, rotting shack." It may have been different from a city brick home, but it still was someone’s home with children inside to consider. This could have been described as a modest dwelling in need of repair. Some were described as broken and poor. If asked, someone might describe themselves as, “one of God’s children, rich in spirit.” It seemed little consideration was given to the people’s feelings or the deeper life they actually lived and certainly the culture was considered and seen only one way – poor.

We never received any pictures from the photographers. We were mailed publications later, second hand magazines, sent to us by a church group from Chicago. That sense of betrayal affected the entire region, not just me. It was an embarrassment to all and still troubles and affects many today.

Everyone assumes I was born a photographer. I was an art student attending Whitesburg High School, receiving the schools annual art award in 1968 (the year I graduated). I was always drawing and painting, mostly from nature. I knew a little about photography. I owned a 35mm camera and later attended the Cleveland Institute of Art. I took my first photography class my second year of art school at age 19. My teacher, Ralph Marshall, was a great man, an inspiring teacher. He grew up in England in a coal-mining town near Wales. He saw promise in my first Appalachian pictures that I didn’t recognize. He encouraged me after viewing my first photographs made back home. He made me feel that I was doing something special right away. It was his interest and the excitement of the medium itself that caused me to change majors from painting to photography.

Artists, not photographers, inspired my beginning search for creative growth. Goya, el Greco, (Francis) Bacon, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and Corot, among others – they motivated my artistic pursuits more than photographers. I’m 61 years old now. I can look back at those same paintings and see how they nurtured and inspired my development when I was young. Timeless, creative work keeps inspiring and communicating from generation to generation. Just as specific mountain people were, and are, inspired sages to many of us, their photographs reflect iconic and everlasting. Painting has always been more stimulating to my photography’s development along with writing and reading great literature. I didn’t trust the practitioners of photography so much because of my experiences with the War on Poverty photographers. I came back to my roots visually through appreciating the passion, spirit, discipline, and dedication that artists and paintings could stir within me.

I’m not a documentarian per se. My work is autobiographical, people-oriented, personal and subjective, with humanistic and artistic concerns. I’ve never said I was a documentary photographer. I’m careful not to. When I teach workshops at the International Center of Photography, among other places across the country, I teach environmental portrait photography and lighting. Still I’m often written about as a documentary photographer and that approach itself has fortunately changed to be more open, individualized, and creatively more all-encompassing. Those changes in photography have happened during my career.

I am continually searching through my own roots. I love reading Southern literature. Faulkner, he got the dialect. He loved, and was, the culture. I’ve never veered from that. When home, what I do is visit, sit and talk for hours with people. I’m genuinely interested in what’s going on in people’s lives. We catch up. Some don’t understand that I have real relationships with diverse people. I try to be as personable as possible. The people are genuine and that’s what feeds a relationship; honest back and forth sharing with vulnerability. We build understandings together. When away, I keep in touch with people, mailing photos and cards, mostly talking by phone.

When looking at photographs - and this is part of my training as an artist - I realize people see, process, and react to what is in their mind's eye with some parts remaining unconscious, not totally responding to what is in front of their physical eyes, as much the mind's eye. This is true of photographer’s perceptions when working as well. We attach ourselves, bringing forth our own, often times, unresolved issues and react to the emotions and thoughts the photograph or situation evokes and brings forth in us individually, not necessarily at all what is reflected in the content of the photograph, or the life, or situation actually before us. The viewer, presenter, and subject are all participants in what I call, “The Work of Looking.”

Our ancestral mountain people are mythologized into our greater existence from our beginnings, a part of our childhood and permanent memories. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we know this cannot be erased. If you are from these mountains, your and my dreams and reality itself are engraved within this collective group consciousness forever. One can choose to repress, but sooner or later, the lives and images of our mountain people will return to us and keep returning until we come to terms with their importance, not just the ones we chose, but all.

“We all are the same, we need to really look at this situation right here. We really need to look at life. We are a blessed people because we're able to walk and able to talk, we have the freedom to get out and to work and raise our families and we ought to treat each other equally.” - Philip Zambala, friend and subject of Shelby Lee Adams

One reason I have continued to work as I do, using a formal view camera, Polaroids and lighting, is because of the complexity of this culture. You can have a descriptive photojournalistic documentary image, culturally enriching authentic mountaineer and a socially conscious politically charged picture, all represented in one picture, in one moment here. In essence, my work is about all those things and more with my own autobiographical and psychological pursuits expressed as well. Pictures can get complicated and share multiple purposes, yet remain separate - personal and meaningful to each of us.

In Eastern Kentucky today, we have vast problems with low self-esteem, both youth and adult, resulting in epidemic drug and alcohol abuse, suicides, and crime, causing many premature deaths. Too many of my own relatives, friends, and their children have died or been permanently damaged from this kind of predominately drug-related activity. I cannot help but believe that in our homes and schools, if we really recognized all equally, with total mutuality and solid support, our children today might not be so vulnerable to this ongoing travesty. Some country preachers testify and preach that in Appalachia we have greatly admirable traditional family values and at the same time, are known as a judgmental society. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” our preachers remind us.

What can an individual do? What I have done is gone into the heads of many hollers, without much of an introduction, not knowing if I would be accepted or shot at and still I’ve kept going. To look into the eye and shake hands with whomever I met, telling them I needed to photograph them because they were important and maybe their kind might be dying out. Some laughed and others said I was crazy, but they all invited me in to sit down and talk. I’d tell them my dream of photographing all the holler dwellers in Eastern Kentucky with dignity and respect. That is what I’ve tried to do and those people have not complained and that makes me feel worth something.

When you study a painting or a great work of art, it can be a spiritual exercise. You come back to it again and again, changing yourself as your perceptions change and mature. From my formal portraits made in the heads of the hollers, I want a direct, somewhat raw engagement where you and the subject are looking into seeing itself, discovering each other together on an unparalleled and equal course of discovery to create a flowing communicative relationship between the viewer and the subject. You are mirroring and they are mirroring humanity, one to another, humbly and heart felt, dropping guardedness. Sometimes some disturbing effects come forward, but they need to be confronted and perhaps cannot be seen in any other way. Together, through looking, we can become more genuine and carry that into real life relationships that bond and unite. But some of us don’t seem to want to see or experience the real other people, yet we all are in the same community.

For those who are interested, having the will to come forward and desiring to transform themselves by participating in engagement with photographs serving as a catalyst, one can break down the stereotype. You must keep coming back to do the work of “looking.” Through familiarity, prayer, and study, our weaknesses and fears bleed away, slowly clarifying as fresh mountain water clears after a slow rain. Humanity comes forward revealing itself and the stereotypes slowly disappear. We then overcome our uncertainties surrounding our culture and people, embracing a more total humanity, not excluding or hiding those in the shadows needing our help. That’s what real engagement is for me. That’s what I’m about - my work and this serious pursuit. That is what genuine art and serious photography has always been for me.

When embracing all of humanity, there is no elitism or poverty. If people in the hollers can do this, so can you, each in your own way. Photography is a powerful tool and I am one Kentuckian who is concerned about many of our people that some wish weren’t here. I know my process is now reaching others. Maybe only a few, one at a time. For some, it's a difficult cathartic experience, but a life-changing and affirming spiritual journey. To the people photographed and seen, maybe with real mature recognition for the first time, they are my purpose. They make it all worthwhile. My work in Appalachia is a labor of love. It’s not about money.

As a college professor, I’d tell my students, “If you photograph someone, you owe them a picture. That’s an obligation. That’s a good thing, a beginning to clear communication.” More people are appreciating my work today, some from far away, some at home. Maybe because they are freeing themselves and shedding the skin of petty cultural complexity, seeing more clearly, humanity just needing humanity.

Shelby Lee Adams August 31, 2012

 

All photographs and essay "The Work of Looking" © Shelby Lee Adams. 1. Leddie and Children, 1990. 2. Brenda, 2004. 3. Angela, 2006. 4. Freddie's Place, 2004. 5. Pauline Standing, 1979.

Looking at Appalachia | William Gedney - Part Three

in ,

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.