Representative

 

While creating the poster for the Madison County Stories exhibit, someone asked if my photograph, Moosehead, Paw Paw, Madison County, NC, 2012, was representative of the county and should be included on the poster. As a rule I think decisions like this are best left to the artist although the question itself raises other legitimate questions about our county and community. Who are we today, in 2013? How has our community changed and stayed the same? Who are our neighbors? What does the land around us mean to us? And how do we represent our place in an honest and accurate way?

There are no easy answers, of course. And they deserve far more time than one simple blog entry can offer. I have some immediate thoughts to share though and will be raising these questions again in subsequent entries. I’m hoping some of you readers will share your ideas also.

When I moved to Madison County forty years ago I believed this to be the most welcoming place I had ever been. It was also the most homogeneous. The local population shared a consistent set of values and traditions that included love of family, land, country, and religion. Most people farmed, or at least, gardened, milked, kept chickens, and heated with wood. And with few exceptions, local residents were warm and engaging and pleased to have new, young people moving into the community and expressing interest in the local culture. Most of us “fereigners,” as Dellie would refer to us, were adopted by local families who taught us skills, introduced us to neighbors and family, and became lifetime friends. Such a gift.

Madison County was a foreign place for many of us newcomers, too. We had come from large cities and cosmopolitan areas with more amenities and the smallness of the place was revelatory for us. Everyone knew each other here; and everyone seemed to know everyone’s business. It was a dry county and religious expression played an important role in most people’s lives. The local dialect and manner of speech were challenging and, like most farming communities, it lived by the rhythms of nature. It was often said that when you set foot in Madison County you stepped back fifty years. That sense of time standing still appealed to a lot of us.

The county has changed radically since the 1970s, as has the rest of the country. We have many new neighbors and I’m struck by the sheer numbers and diversity of people moving in and committing themselves to a place they likely knew little about. Modern technologies and better road access have linked us with wherever we want to be in the world, which has opened the entire county and its people to new ideas and non-traditional values. Change and transition are difficult for any community to accept, but I think more so in small, tight-knit places like our own.

When I ask new people why they’ve moved to Madison County, most simply say, “The place just feels right.” It’s a defining sentiment about the county and one shared by newcomers and locals alike. It’s interesting to me that despite our differences in look, lifestyle, thought, and belief, we are here in Madison County for essentially the same reason. It Just Feels Right. Perhaps that is our best and most accurate representation of  place. 

Thank You

 

I want to thank everyone for your support of my work. I am touched and humbled. We reached a new milestone in March with 1,290 unique visitors to my blog and website with almost 5,000 page views. The number of subscribers has also been increasing at a steady clip. 

I also want to thank Jamie Paul for his editing skill, tech savviness, ideas, and mostly for being the nag that he is in terms of keeping me moving forward with the blog postings.

I've come to thoroughly love blogging and have said often over the last few months that it could be the perfect medium of expression for me. It allows me the opportunity to combine my lifelong love of writing with my photography in short vignettes that are both fun and challenging to work with.

So, again, thank you for all your support. Tell your friends and neighbors. And I'll try to keep them coming.

Seldom Scene - A Privy Is the Place To Be

 

Big Pine, Madison County, NC, 1979.

 

I don’t mind an outhouse.

I’ve used them off and on

during my time in Madison County.

I like them for their simplicity.

 

I’ve read of cultures that believe

moving your bowels inside the house

is unclean and uncivilized. Imagine.

 

The flies and creatures of summer to contend with.

And stomach issues in winter are no fun,

especially with children.

 

I like an outhouse on a cold winter morning.

Cold enough for a union suit - the kind

with the flap in back that you unbutton.

If you roll up the fabric from the flap

it solves the problem of a cold toilet seat.

 

If you’ve built your outhouse with a good view,

with maybe a glass door.

Or perhaps an engaging novel is in your life.

A privy is the place to be.

 

It’s uses no energy.

Shavings and lime, wood ash, are all you need.

 

I recognize the stigma attached.

And how far we’ve come as a modern society

that we don’t have to shit in the woods,

or in a hole out back.

They’re not for everyone, I know.

A major city without indoor plumbing would be hard.

 

But here in the woods, with few people around.

An outhouse feels right.

In touch with yourself, the land, and the elements.

A place to ponder and reflect.

 

Isaac and Robbie Gunter

I was introduced to the Sodom community of Madison County by Sheila Kay Adams. Sheila was a student at Mars Hill College back in 1975 and I had just begun working at the newly established photo archive at the college. I remember speaking with Sheila about the difficulty gaining access to a small mountain community where I could hang out and make pictures. Sheila offered to take me to her home community of Sodom to meet her great aunt, Dellie Chandler Norton. It would prove to be an offer that would irrevocably change my life and influence everything I’ve done since.

Isaac and Robbie Gunter and their son working tobacco, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975.

On our first trip to Sodom together, we passed an older couple and a young man working in a tobacco patch. The older man was plowing the clean and elegant rows with a horse. The other two people were hoeing and pulling the loose, freshly plowed soil around each individual plant. There wasn’t a weed to be seen and the deep green plants were thriving from the personal attention.

Lacking self-confidence and any understanding of local mores, I never would have stopped had I been on my own. But Sheila was the perfect bridge. She knew Isaac and Robbie Gunter and after introducing me and explaining who I was and what I was doing, they readily agreed to pose for photographs. 

Isaac and Robbie Gunter, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975.

Seen from the eyes of a young documentarian thirty-eight years ago  - someone new to the community, coming from a very different place, who didn’t yet know the importance of spending time with people - the photographs felt like wary introductions when I made them. I knew they were nice portraits, but formal and static. They lacked the energy and movement I wanted in my photographs back then and the images never made it beyond the contact sheets.

But a photograph’s meaning can change for all of us over time. Looking at these photographs now with the eyes of someone much older – as old as the Gunters were when I made their pictures - I see something different. I see two people comfortably presenting themselves to the camera in a relaxed and open manner. I see people assured in their posture and confident in who they are. I see the strength and grace in their life-worn faces and hands. And what I once perceived as a formal introduction, I now recognize as a personal invitation into their world.

Robbie's Memorial built by her son Michael, and Isaac and Robbie's Grave and Marker,

Sodom, Madison County, NC, 2013.
 

Tillman Chandler - A Lesson

I took this photograph of Tillman Chandler in 1975 and have never exhibited or published it. There are reasons I’ve kept it hidden away all these years, just as there are reasons now for bringing it to the light.


Tillman Chandler and Junior, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975.

I was new to Sodom back then – probably my second or third stay with Dellie and her adopted son Junior - and I was still finding my way in the wider community, something I couldn’t have done without Dellie and her extended family providing access. One day Dellie suggested that Junior take me to meet Tillman who was Dellie’s cousin and a tobacco farmer who lived alone in a cabin on top of the mountain. Tillman’s brother was Dillard Chandler, the noted ballad singer and protagonist of John Cohen’s film The End of An Old Song, but where Dillard was known to be out and about, Tillman rarely left home.

 

 Tillman's Barn and Tobacco, Sodom, 1975. from Sodom Laurel Album

Tillman was there when we arrived, and friendly as I recall, but he wouldn’t let me photograph him. I could photograph around his place, but not him. We stayed an hour or more and I made some pictures of his tobacco and barns. Walking to my car, I turned to thank him and saw this picture.  This was in the days of manual-everything cameras, but I estimated the shutter and aperture settings and pre-focused the lens. I steadied myself, and the camera, and pressed the shutter. I liked the image when I saw it, but felt it lacked energy and it was easy enough to set it aside. But more importantly, there was the matter of my stealing the picture after he had asked me not to and I knew I’d never do anything with it no matter how much I liked it.

I saw Tillman infrequently after that. No one saw him much. He would walk the couple of miles to Rube Gosnell’s store every two or three weeks, pick up some corn meal and feed, a few groceries, some snuff, and walk back to the cabin. A couple of years later folks hanging out at the store realized they hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and decided to go up there. They found him on the floor of the cabin, obviously dead for some time as rats had eaten his body. His bones were still garbed in overalls, shirt, and hat. Reportedly, there were thousands of dollars in cash stuffed into the hat’s brim.

Our young friends Kelsey and Tommy have been looking at a piece of land over in Sodom recently and mentioned there was a small graveyard on the property with someone named Tillman Chandler in it. That prompted me to find the old negative and scan it. From the barn in the background, they confirmed it was the place they were interested in.

For me, Documentary Expression should be a reflection of both the subject and the artist. While I had the image open In Photoshop, I saw a piece of the picture I had never noticed before - Junior’s head in the lower left corner. Those eyes – fixed and riveting – mimicking my own fear and nervousness as I shot the single frame. That simple element – Junior’s eyes – prompted my own memory and brought back the tension and guilt at the moment I made the photograph, and the energy I thought the photograph lacked in the first place.

But what of the ethics of publishing the picture now, years after Tillman’s death? Not only did I take his picture without permission years ago, but now I’m posting it.

 

Kelsey, Tommy, and Maci at Tillman's old cabin, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 2013.

Kelsey, Tommy, and I walked up to the cabin last week. It was different than I remembered it. We hiked up the side of the mountain to the gravesite and found it covered with brush and small saplings. There was an unmarked stone beside Tillman’s marker that Dellie’s granddaughter, Jane Goforth, felt was his mother or father, or both.  We had wondered how they got the bodies to this isolated spot, alone in the woods, a steep climb from the house. From Jane, “Tillman is buried with his mother and Father. There are some other graves. I don't know who they are. It is probably more family members. Tillman is not buried there in his original grave. The weather was so bad that winter they buried him behind the house. They went back the first of April and moved him on up the ridge with his parents. They had to carry him up on a sled.”

I think there is merit in the story, something to be learned that is hard not to share and shouldn’t be ignored. Photography is about memory. It reminds us of people and places from our past, and our present, and helps us understand the particulars of our lives – how we got from there to here. When I look at this photograph of Tillman today, I see an old man holding a cane staring out to an unseen distance. He would be dead less than two years later. There’s a barn, and a dirt road, with a mountain range in the background. It’s serene, and quiet, and I want to believe Tillman, and his family, would think it was a good likeness of him. A likeness worth remembering.

 

Tillman's Grave, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 2013.

Especially with the added words, the photograph paints a picture of place and people. In 1975, there were few remaining people like Tillman Chandler - fiercely independent, raising tobacco for a little cash money, who lived and died by himself on the side of a mountain. I think the photograph and story speak to our shared history of place, as well as, the personal past of the Chandler family, which I hope makes it worth sharing. 

 

Leslie

Leslie Stilwell not long after I met her, Paw Paw, Madison County, NC, 1988.

Leslie - stunning in 1988. Beautiful and resolute today on your 59th Birthday. Marrying you remains the best decision I ever made.

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What's Appropriate - May Not Be for Everyone

The Madison County Stories exhibit was taken down last week at the Madison County Arts Council. I’ve spoken of the exhibit in previous posts so I won’t repeat myself here. But the Project did raise questions that go to the heart of Art and Documentary Expression. As a Visiting Artist with Duke University, my role was twofold – to mentor the young Madison and Duke women in their efforts to document life in Madison County through photography, and to continue my own long-term documentation of evolution and change in the county. 

When hanging the exhibit at Duke University last fall, the question of appropriateness was raised about three of my photographs I wanted to include. The images, two from a Harley motorcycle rally in Hot Springs and one from the Madison County jail in Marshall, showed women, or depictions of women, in stages of undress. I anticipated concerns about these three particular pictures, but in my mind, the photographs were legitimate views of present-day life in Madison County – no less true or believable than my photographs of parties, rodeos, preachers, and farmers that were included in the show.

 

Biker Rally, Madison County, North Carolina, 2012. 

I do think the photographs represent a side of the county that many people wish didn’t exist, and would choose to ignore, hoping it might simply go away. Similarly, the photographs could be interpreted as demeaning toward women, a point difficult to argue against. One person deemed them pornographic. Another was concerned that potential funders of the project would find them distasteful and refuse future support. Others felt the pictures would upset the sensibilities of children and parents whose work was also in the exhibit.

Community values do play a role in an artist’s mind and I did not hang the photographs in either venue. The children, their parents, and the larger community were my primary concerns. Unlike a blog, where someone can choose to read it or not, the exhibit would have offered no opportunity to avoid the pictures. We live in a conservative place, and while most residents are aware of, and indulgent of, alternative behaviors, they don’t want to be reminded or associated with it.  Are the pictures pornographic? I don’t think so. Raw? Yes. Difficult for some people to look at? Yes.

 

Biker Rally, Madison County, North Carolina, 2012.

 

 In the Old Madison County Jail, Marshall North Carolina, 2011. 

Documentary expression – photography, film, sound - is rooted in reality, a representation of the world around us, and oftentimes that reality can be hard to look at. But what is a documentarian's, or artist’s, purpose? Is it to satisfy existing perceptions or offer new ways of seeing? Should it follow the safe and predictable or risk displeasure and controversy? Is it to challenge, or reinforce, the status quo? These are always difficult and palpable questions – made more so when dealing with the lives of real people in one’s home community. Many factors influence the decision to show, or not show, particular images. But if one goal is a truthful and complete portrayal of place, how does one choose to leave some things out?

Hero

John Lee Hooker, Asheville, NC, 1985

John Lee Hooker, b. August 22, 1917, d. June 21, 2001, was born the son of a sharecropper in Coahoma County, Mississippi.  He was an influential American blues musician, singer, and songwriter who developed a unique style of country blues that he called the “talkin’ blues” that was considered his trademark. Two of Hooker’s songs, Boogie Chillen and Boom Boom, are on the list of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 songs that shaped rock and roll with Boogie Chillen being named one of the Songs of the Century. Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is a member of the blues and rock and roll halls of fame.

In 1985, George Bostic and his wife Connie, a noted Asheville artist, operated the Asheville Music Hall on Wall Street in downtown Asheville. It was one of the first music venues to open in the newly renovated city. As the blues scene has picked up in recent weeks in downtown Marshall, I was reminded of this concert years ago by one of the genre's great artists and this photograph I made of him in mid-performance. 

A Day Like Today

 To go outside on a day like today is to know insignificance. 

It has to do with the wind, its domination of the landscape.

Coming down the mountain above my studio,

a steady blow with long gusts and a stinging drizzle.

Trees, big trees, swaying back and forth, back and forth.

It will change to snow tonight, the color of the sky tells it.

 

It’s a cleansing wind.

Finishing off the work of winter,

the hard freezes and leafless limbs.

Out with the old and stale.

New dead limbs in the woods and on the road.

Best carry the chainsaw in the truck for a couple of days.

 

With only a vague promise of bright and fresh.

Peaks of blue in a sky washing gray.

A flush of daffodil blooms last week

brought spring to people’s hearts and minds.

Today they’re beat back.

Limp and broken in the cold and wind.

 

 

Mom and Dad on Their Wedding Day

 February 25, 1945, My parents - Robert Warren Amberg, Catherine Galeano Amberg,

with Anthony Vitto and Mary Mastromarino Galante. 

Today, had they lived, would have been my parent’s 68th wedding anniversary. As it was, my father died in February 2002 as they were approaching their 57th anniversary and my mother passed away in 2008.

My parents married in a bit of a rush. Mom had been dating Ralph for a couple of years – a career Army officer – and my father was Ralph’s best friend. When Ralph broke off the relationship, my father stepped into the void and he and my mother were married within two weeks of their first date. Part of the rush had to do with World War II, which was coming to a conclusion in Europe, and after a couple of weeks of marital bliss Dad was shipped off to Italy where he stayed until the end of the war.

But part of the rush to marriage also had to do with my mother’s sense of rebellion. She was a first generation American of Italian and Sicilian ancestry who was clearly ready to move away from that old world way of living. My grandparents, however, were not quite ready to let go of her or their traditions and my grandfather, especially, was so displeased with the marriage that he didn’t attend the wedding. It wasn’t just that my father wasn’t Italian, let alone not Sicilian, but nobody knew anything about him, his family, or his prospects. My mother’s two young Italian cousins –whose families were also from Gioia de Colle in Puglia, Italy - stood with them at the wedding as symbols of friendship and love, but also as kind of sanctioning agents who recognized and accepted that the old world was changing. The marriage was a leap of faith for my father as well. He was a mid-westerner, a meat and potatoes guy, a quiet man steeped in good manners and efficient organization, who was marrying into a large, loud, and emotional Italian family that loved to gamble, drink, eat, and party. 

 Mom and Dad, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1978. 

By 1978, at the time of the bottom picture, my parents had four children, one grandchild, a house in the suburbs of Washington, DC, and thirty-three years of marriage behind them. By that time, as is the case with most relationships, the romance and the rebellion had worn off and they were faced with not only the good things they had built together, but also their differences in temperament, belief, and culture. My father had taken early retirement from his government job and was ready to move to Florida where they had bought a lot in a subdivision. But as time went on, it became increasingly clear that my mother would never leave her family or the place she had always known as home.

They stayed together until the end and I, for one, often wondered why. But my parents were of the generation that stayed together and honored their commitments, no matter the differences that arose later in life. It’s a lesson many of us could well learn from.

I've Got The Zuma Blues

Imagine my surprise at walking into Zuma, our local coffee shop in downtown Marshall, and finding a middle-aged black guy playing electric guitar and singing Chicago Blues. But there he was, Al “Coffee” McDaniel, and not only was he singing and playing the Blues, but he was doing it really, really well. The man has got the gift.

This latest addition to the Madison County music scene is to be a regular Monday night affair at Zuma and yet another feather in owner Joel Friedman’s cap. Friedman has been hosting the very popular Thursday night Bluegrass jam with the legendary fiddler, Bobby Hicks, for the last few years, but Blues Jam represents a significant departure from Madison County’s musical norm.

 

As most of us who live here, and many people who don’t, understand, Madison County is steeped in musical tradition – balladry, old-time, country, and bluegrass – and is considered a “source” community by music scholars for those genres. Recently though, with the arrival of hundreds of new people to the community including numerous first class musicians from other musical genres, our melodious parameters have been expanding. One of those musicians is the noted, and widely respected jazz keyboardist Steve Davidowski who is the mover and shaker behind the Monday Blues Jam. Davidowski is known in music circles as an early member of the Dixie Dregs, a jazz, southern rock, bluegrass, and classical fusion band based in Athens, Georgia. Since moving to Marshall, he has graced the town with his impromptu piano playing, walks around town with piccolo in hand, and his wonderful yearly benefit concerts for Neighbors in Need. This past Monday, in addition to McDaniel, he was joined by John Herman on bass, James Wilson on drums, and John Hupertz on harmonica. Local singing sensation, Ashley Heath, also sat in and did a full throttle version of Stormy Monday. With this new sound in town, Marshall residents can be assured that Mondays will not be stormy, and Tuesdays won’t be bad either.

Top, Blues Jam at Zuma Coffee with, from left James Wilson, John Herman, Steve Davidowski, and Al McDaniel.

Middle, Ashley Heath singing Stormy Monday with McDaniel, Steve Davidowski on sax, John Hupertz on harp.

Bottom, James Wilson on drums, John Herman on bass.

Peacham

 

I arrived at my shoot the day before the assignment. I was in Marshfield, Vermont, close to St. Johnsbury in the Northeast Kingdom, and not far from the Canadian border. It was cold for the middle of October, even up there, and spitting snow. After settling into my motel, I drove to the town of Peacham, a place I had visited fifteen years earlier, looking for Vermont cheddar and maple syrup. In a store I noticed a poster announcing a town hall meeting that night with Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s Independent US Senator.

I follow politics pretty closely and I’ve concluded, like a lot of people it seems, that Congress is malfunctioning, not representing the people its supposed to serve, and only a pawn of big business. That said, I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders and thought this would be my only opportunity to hear him speak in person. So, I went to the meeting and wasn’t disappointed.

Sanders describes himself as a Democratic Socialist, a label that scares many people. But in reality, what that label means is he is more interested in the lives of his constituents, the common people, than he is in big business or moneyed interests. He consistently votes for environmental protection, workers rights, universal health care, and media reform. One of my favorite things about him is he was a carpenter for a time before he got into politics. He was also the President of the University of Vermont.

At the town hall meeting, Sanders had chosen to spend his campaign dollars on food and provided a great, homey meal for everyone that showed up. While standing in line for grub, I met two women who both had sons that graduated from Warren Wilson College. For me, that was a sign I had come to the right place. The food was great and Senator Sander’s talk was the populist diatribe I was hoping for. I brought a yard sign home to the farm, knowing full well I couldn't vote for him, but hoping it would be a reminder of values I believe in.

Portrait of Liz Franklin

I made this photograph in 1975, less than two years after my arrival in Madison County. I had gone with Dellie, and her sister Berzilla, to visit an old friend of Berzilla’s named Ernie Franklin who lived in the small community of Chapel Hill in the county. She knew him from the older days, when her husband Lee was alive and they would regularly make music in the community. Ernie played fiddle and banjo and also made instruments and tools. She didn’t know where he lived exactly, but they figured we’d find him.

After some asking around and missed turns, we turning onto a dirt track, passed a broad empty pasture, and into a hollar with nice southern exposure. Soon, we came to a small cluster of buildings – a house with a thin smoke coming from a stone chimney, the remains of the old house with wood shingles, now used for storage, and I think a small barn. 

 

A small, wiry man came out of the house. Ernie Franklin. After he and Berzilla got re-acquainted, he invited us in to meet his mother who also lived there. With winter approaching, Liz Franklin was soon going to live with her daughter in Asheville, and once inside the house, you realized how tough it would be for an older, frail, person. There was no indoor plumbing. An outhouse. Heat came from a fireplace and coal stove set in the middle of a small room. No electricity – light came from oil lamps.  This was how she was raised and lived most of her life, and you could sense she didn't want to leave. Years of hard work showed in her face and hands, but she clearly wouldn’t last through a hard season.

I haven’t shown or exhibited this photograph very much over the years. Initially, I loved it. It seemed to embody a romantic notion of place and people for me - tough, resilient, wizened, looking to the light, and seeing a past. But with more time in the community, I began to understand those heroic characteristics were largely coming from me and less so the people themselves. People like Dellie, who had lived hard lives, knew there was little of the romantic about it. So, I put the photograph away and published another from the same visit in my book.

 

But I’ve re-visited the first photograph in recent months, initially as part of digitizing my negative files, and then because I realized I still love the portrait. Thirty-eight years after the image was made, I can look at her face and see an idealized, noble rendering that fits neatly into a specific stereotype of place. But now, I can also see that her look is true.    

Van Griffin

 

Van Griffin at the Rodeo, Marshall, Madison County, NC, 2012

Van Griffin died last night.

I didn’t know Van all that well, but what I knew of him I liked.  I met him a few years ago through his son, Toby, and would run into him with frequency in downtown Marshall, or on the Bypass, and always at the rodeo and county fair. He was forever  ready to talk and was always generous with me – never refusing a request to make his photograph.

Van was a common man; and I say that in the most complimentary of ways. Easy to be around, no pretensions, funny, fun-loving. Here in the mountains, people would say he was a good ol’ boy. He kept chickens, lots of chickens, and regularly won prizes for them at the county and regional fairs.

This morning as I write this, I know Van is at peace after a long illness. I think of his family – his wife Ruth, his children – Toby, Keith, and Jan, his grandchildren – Levi, Jordan, Savannah, and Kaitlin, his brother Coy and his sister Jacksie. Death is always hardest for those left behind, but I know we will carry memories of this kind, graceful man with us for a long time and those memories will cause us to smile.

Absent # 2

Having a black bear rubbing against your chest is a hard act to follow, but after leaving Ben and Debbie Kilham, I drove on to western Massachusetts to meet with John Freeman and his sister Jane. They lived on an amazing piece of land, dotted and marked with artifacts and burial grounds from native and settler times. They took me to the original boundary marker that deeded their land to a distant ancestor from Native Americans in the late 16th century. Like many ancestral and historical forests, the Freeman’s land is surrounded by development and they’re under increasing pressure to sell the property because of high land values and corresponding high taxes. I don’t like the word “magical” so much, thinking it overused and easy. But I did, in fact, spend a magical day walking with them and their friends, Archie and Dave, through a primordial landscape in the misting rain.

 

Top, John and Jane Freeman. Bottom, left, Native Donation Pile, right, John and Jane Freeman with Dave Beyor and Harrison Achilles.


I arrived home to an email from Apple notifying me of a potential hard drive crash and a need to immediately replace it. This is always disconcerting news if, as most photographers in the modern world do, you store your files digitally. That hard drive represents years of work. Thank you for back up – one of technology’s blessings. But my assistant, Jamie Paul, and I also faced production of a large number of prints for an exhibition at the Jameson Gallery at Duke at the end of November. The exhibit, titled Madison County Stories, presented new views of mountain life from myself, Duke University students, and Madison Middle School girls. The students had all participated in the Spring Creek Literacy Project; a summer program with the Duke students acting as mentors to the middle-schoolers in storytelling, writing, and photography. It was a big exhibit – 43 of my prints and 146 student pieces – and while my work was finished and ready to hang, the student work was still in the editing phase and had to be printed and put behind glass. But despite the loss of a week due to the computer repair, and some timely help from Kyndall and MaryRose, we got it finished and down to Durham on the Monday after Thanksgiving. It took us three and a half days to hang it, and the process was not without it’s own drama and intricate mathematical equations. The show looked wonderful and the opening was a big success and well attended. My friends Debbie Chandler and Denise O’Sullivan, who are Dellie’s grandchildren and noted ballad singers in their own right, sang and pretty much stole the show.

 

Kelsey, Paw Paw Creek, Madison County, NC, 2012, from Madison County Stories.

                              Top, Denise Norton O'Sullivan Singing in the Barn, Sodom Laurel, Madison County, NC, 1976, from SodomSong.

 Bottom, Debbie Norton Chandler Dancing at the Eno River Festival, Durham, NC, 1976, from SodomSong.

 

I can’t say enough good things about Jamie Paul. In addition to the great work he's been doing with me for the last eighteen months, he's also found time to produce a CD of his music, Let It Mend, which will be available for purchase beginning February 5th at jamiepaulmusic.com.

 

We decided on a quick turnaround and moved the show to Marshall for a January 18 opening reception at the Madison County Arts Council. Here, the exhibit presented different hanging challenges, and more limited space. Most importantly though, it offered the opportunity to present the work in the place it was created with the individual “artists” and their families in attendance. The reception was packed - teachers and administrators from the school system, politicians, and other members of the community, many of whom were in the photographs. It became more Homecoming than Art Exhibit, highlighted by the student's pride in seeing their work on the gallery walls.

Top, left, Kristina Dixon, right, Cassidy Belcher. Bottom, left, Brittany Norton, right, Makalah Creaseman.

All students are from Madison County Middle School.

It’s good to have work. Assignments, lectures, exhibits, and grants pay bills and provide time to work on personal projects. I’m very fortunate to get to do what I do and I’m grateful for it. Additionally, my work often takes me out to the wider world, to places and with people I would not normally have the chance to see or meet. Throughout my career, photography has provided open windows to diverse, beautiful, inspiring places. I love that that is the case. These trips help me understand that people everywhere are much the same – kind, generous, and helpful – while also possessing strong differences of opinion, speech, and manner. We live on a wildly diverse planet in a wildly tumultuous time. It would seem that flexibility, tolerance, and an ability to adapt will play increasingly important roles in our lives.

Absent # 1

I have been mostly absent from this site since the end of October and I apologize for my longer-than-anticipated leave. Jamie, the young man who works with me, has counseled me about the pitfalls of electronic media. Rule # 1 is not to be absent from your site for very long because people will forget about it, and you. I’ve broken this first, elemental rule.

But in my own defense, it’s been a busy, hectic stretch of time. It began in mid-September with a weeklong trip to Kentucky and Mississippi for the American Forest Foundation. In three different locations, I photographed landowners who participate in the American Tree Farm System, picturing their involvement with their land and forests. Near Bardstown, Kentucky, I spent the day with two Trappist monks, Brothers Conrad and Bartholomew, at the Abbey of Gethsemani. We spoke at length of faith and forests as we walked and rode through the 2,600-acre tree farm they share with other resident monks. At one time over 270 monks lived at the monastery and it operated as a farm, producing most of what the monks consumed, as well as, world-famous fruitcake and cheeses. With fewer than 50 monks now, the farm mostly produces trees, which are managed for production and retreat. The Abbey was home to the Catholic scholar and writer, Thomas Merton, who I know from my Catholic youth. It was an honor to see his home and the spot that inspired much of his writing.

 Top, The wall of Thomas Merton's House. Bottom, left, Brother Conrad, right, Brother Bartholomew. 

That six-day trip was followed soon thereafter by a presentation at Wake Forest University. My talk and accompanying exhibition in the University Library was part of a larger event surrounding the screening of the film, Over Home: Love Songs from Madison County. The film, by Kim Dryden and Joe Cornelius, looks at the evolution of a cappella ballad singing, for which Madison County is a source community. Sheila Kay Adams, the county’s gifted balladeer, storyteller, and writer, is the protagonist in the film and an old friend. I came to the project through my early (ca. 1970s) photographs of singers and musicians in the Sodom community of Madison County, some of which are used in the film, and my continued documentation of the county’s lifestyle and changes, including images of music and the arts.

 Sheila Kay Adams, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975, from SodomSong.

From Winston-Salem, I continued on to Duke University and a series of classes, workshops, and lectures as part of my role as a Visiting Artist for the current school year. One of the lectures was at Perkins Library in the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The Library has a significant archive of documentary photography and will eventually house my archive. It’s a perfect venue – small (seats 75,) intimate, couches and comfortable chairs, and good sound – and it was full with a nice mix of students, faculty, and staff. My talk was titled, Bloody Madison, ShatterZone, and the Jewel of the Blue Ridge, and looked at the demographic, cultural, and environmental evolution of Madison County.

 

 Greg Mosser Singing at Jamie Paul's Birthday Party, Marshall, Madison County, NC, 2010, from ShatterZone.

I returned home for about eight days and then left on a ten-day trip for the Forest Foundation. This trek took me to the northeast and work with another group of tree farmers. My first stop was with Mike and Vivien Fritz who live just west of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, on a beautiful piece of land they’ve groomed with twenty-five miles of cross country ski and snowshoe trails that are open to their entire community for use.

From the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, I drove through the White Mountains in New Hampshire that boast Mt. Washington, second only to North Carolina’s Mt. Mitchell as the tallest peak east of the Mississippi River, and onto the North Family Farm in Canterbury, New Hampshire. Tim Meeh and Jill McCullough’s place had been part of the original Canterbury Shaker Village that dated back to 1792 and the landscape remained rich with the Shaker’s presence – stone walls and boundary markers, mill traces. Tim’s father bought the place in 1950 and it has been a family farm since then. Tim and Jill make syrup from 2,000 tapped maples, sell hay and firewood, and operate completely by wind and solar power. I stayed in their basement apartment for two nights and we found much in common from our present lives, as well as, a shared past from the late sixties and early seventies. It is so nice to be on the road and wind up in a place where you immediately feel at home.

 

Top, Tim Meeh & Jill McCullough. Bottom left, Replacing sap lines, right, their barn.

From the Shaker Village, I drove across New Hampshire, which isn’t very far, to visit with Ben and Debbie Kilham on their Tree Farm near Lyme. The Kilham’s also make maple syrup, and operate a small saw mill, but Ben is mosly noted for his work with orphaned black bear cubs. He is the state’s certified bear rehabilitator and often has as many as twenty bear cubs roaming in a fenced eight-acre lot behind his house. This stop featured my first, and probably last, opportunity to have a 100-pound cub rubbing its back against my chest. Ben is doing amazing work with orphaned cubs, all of which are released into the wild, and his long-term studies of black bear behavior have broken new ground in our understanding of these incredible creatures that, as Ben’s research has discovered, share more traits with humans than one might imagine. 

 

 Top, Ben & Debbie Kilham, Middle, left, Discovering a bear den while in the woods marking trees, right, Ben and his sister, Phoebe, walking to the food plot, Bottom, Ben feeding his cubs.

http://www.forestfoundation.org/

www.monks.org/

northfamilyfarm.com/

http://www.robamberg.com/galleries/sodomsong/

Over Home: Love Songs from Madison County

http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/

http://www.benkilham.com/Benkilham.com/HOME_PAGE.html

http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/

This post will be followed in a couple of days by "Absent #2."