Thank you to the Asheville Citizen-Times and Erin Brethauer for including my work in The Living Portrait Series. This Part Two of my five part look at Kelsey Green. Please click the link below to see the whole piece as it appears on the Citizen-Times website.
Kelsey Green at her Place, Chandler Cove, Sodom, Madison County, NC 2014
Dog Daze, Marshall, Madison County, NC 2012
Born and raised in the suburbs, I don’t believe I had ever heard the term “Dog Days” until I moved to Madison County and heard farmers speak of them. They, of course, refer to the hot and sultry days of summer, usually in July and August, which around here meant tobacco time.
But according to Wikipedia, the term originated with the Greeks. The Romans would sacrifice a “red” dog every spring to appease Sirius – the Dog Star – which they believed to be the cause of the hot weather. The Dog Days were widely believed to be an evil time when the sea boiled, dogs grew mad, and men suffered from fevers and hysterics.
Well, my hometown of Marshall, in its post-tobacco present, has added a new twist to the definition and Friday, August 8 at 5 pm, marks the 7th Annual Dog Daze event in town. The event features music, food, and art walks with the main attraction being the Parade of Dogs from the island to downtown, which begins at 6:30.
Dog Daze is one of many quirky, playful and artistic happenings that seem to have overtaken Marshall in recent years. Scores of new people, bars, music, bakeries, bicycles and galleries have brought new life to our town, which had been languishing and mostly vacant for the previous three decades. There are people in the county who do not like the changes and I can understand their difficulty accepting what appears to be a foreign invasion. But evolution is never easy or smooth and if communities are going to thrive, evolution is inevitable and should be welcomed.
Mens Room, Ingles, Marshall Bypass, 2014
So, I stopped at Ingles the other day, needing a few groceries and needing to pee, not an unusual combination of needs for me. There is something at Ingles that seems to cause my bladder to relax. Let's just say I'm familiar with the mens room.
Imagine my surprise and joy when I entered the hallowed chamber and was greeted by a colorful and warming bouquet of fresh flowers. My bladder loved it and, at my age, having a happy bladder is both welcoming and occasionally vital. They offered a sweet fragrance and an unsaid message that said, "We value you and want your stay at our store to be cheerful and bright."
Now, I've never known the Ingles mens room, even at the old Ingles across the street, to be exceptionally nasty or repulsive. I've been in some bad mens rooms in my day - a memory from a bus station in Mexico comes to mind - and Ingles has always been better than that. An unflushed toilet here, an overflowing waste can there, but nothing truly egregious. Rather, I would have described them as utilitarian, drab, dark, not places you necessarily want to linger.
But flowers, man, over the top. I envision men meeting there to chat over coffee, admiring the surroundings, combing their hair and checking their smile. Who would've thunk it. Certainly, not me.
The Asheville Citizen-Times and staff photographer, Erin Brethauer, have included my work in their weekly Living Portrait Series, published every Friday in the Arts and Entertainment Section of the newspaper. This is a wonderful opportunity for me to join other local photographers in presenting glimpses into the lives of some of our region's residents. I've chosen to portray the same person throughout the month - a family friend and young back-to-the-lander, Kelsey Green.
Kelsey, PawPaw, Madison County, NC 2012
Downtown Portland, Oregon, 2014
Left, Outside the Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Oregon, 2014
Right, Mark Hosler (right) and Doug Theralt (left) from the band, Office Products, in the Green Room at the Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Oregon, 2014
Back to Portland after our week on the Olympic Peninsula. From slow to fast, quiet to noise, open landscape and forest to mountainous buildings. We like it here.
First night back we go to the Crystal Ballroom to hear our friend Mark Hosler who lives in Madison County. Mark is a founding member of the band Negativland and he was doing a show of his unique music, which I might describe as organized noise.
Mark Hosler pushing the buttons and turning the dials, Crystal Ballroom, Portland, Oregon, 2014
We mostly take it easy the last few days. Museums, food, some shopping, more food, laying around, yet more food and drinks. We hang out with Ben at Clyde Common, the bar/restaurant he works in. We meet his friends and co-workers who, to a person, treat us like visiting royalty. Ben clearly loves his work, bartender and mixologist, and I must say how satisfying it is to see one's child doing something he enjoys, where he has found his niche. Home.
Ben mixing at Clyde Common, Portland, Oregon, 2014
Leslie on the Beach at La Push, Washington, 2014
click image to enlarge
Cool and rainy. A perfect respite from the heat we've left in North Carolina. Leslie walking like a champ on all terrains with her new hip. Enjoying walking together again. The beach is littered with these giant, aged remnants. So many we assumed they had once grown there when that sandy, rocky beach was part of the adjoining forest, its soil rich and loamy. "No," we were told. "Those trees were uprooted deep in the forests many generations ago. Floods brought them down the mountain in rivers, which emptied into the bay, where they were eventually washed onto the shore." Monuments from a different time and place. The woman who told us, my age perhaps, remembered playing on them as a child, as her parents and grandparents did before her.
Sol Duc Waterfall Trail, Olympic National Park, Washington, 2014.
Sol Duc Waterfall, Olympic National Park, Washington, 2014.
In this place, words seem next to impossible and photographs barely passable. Nothing to fully capture the absolute power of the rainforest and deep woods. The silence. The light. The scent of a rich life living all around you. And why would you want to capture it if it is only the merest of imitations?
In the HOH Rainforest, Olympic National Park, Washington.
Wilson's Warbler, Forks, Washington, 2014.
She found it in the grill of our car
when we stopped at the Loggers Museum in Forks.
A monument to clearcuts and habitat loss.
A Wilson’s Warbler, my buddy Wayne tells me.
Stilled in perfection.
But for one last fleeting moment.
Alive in grace and color and flight.
Doing what it is alive to do.
The next beat and it’s dead.
No match for our rented Ford Focus.
Our songbirds are in trouble.
I read it in the news.
Millions lost yearly
to development,
to man’s carelessness,
to our cute and cuddly cats.
What will our lives be without them?
Our specimen, our Wilson’s Warbler,
a victim of our need to see the world.
Bad timing, I think.
Collateral damage? I ask.
An uncounted cost of our trip.
Only acknowledged in our thoughts and images.
Architectural and Food Elements in Portland and Beyond.
Downtown Portland, Oregon, 2014. Sometimes photographs just appear, magically, while walking, you look up and there it is, gone with the next step. I love it when this happens. Pay attention, I think.
From Child #1's Kitchen Window, Portland, Oregon, 2014. It's a culture of food and drink and we were fully engaged.
Olympic Provisions, Portland, Oregon, 2014. Incredible homemade salamis, a wonderful lunch, and a sign I would like at the bottom of my driveway.
Neah Bay, Washington, 2014. More creative signage and even better fish. For breakfast, with eggs, toast and jelly, perhaps a tater, hard to beat in my mind.
Cannon Beach, Oregon
Selected images from our recent trip to Oregon and Washington will appear sporadically over the next few weeks.
Chickencatcher, Samson, Alabama, 1994
44" x 87" print by Cone Editions in Vermont. Editing by Jamie Paul.
Now gracing the entrance wall at King Daddy's restaurant in West Asheville.
The food is incredible. Dark meat chicken with sweet potato/habanero sauce with a waffle. Killer.
On the Train, near Monterrey, Mexico 1989
It’s been slightly over two years since we launched my new website. I want to invite you to look at two new galleries of images - Scapes and Staring. All new work in the Staring gallery and a mix of older and newer work in Scapes. I hope you enjoy them.
This coming July also marks the two year anniversary of my blog. I must admit I’ve surprised even myself in my ability to stick with this form of expression and I continue to love this particular makeup of pictures and words. For those of you who haven't subscribed to the blog, I hope you will consider doing so.
Mucking Barn Stalls, PawPaw, 2014
I’ve been mucking barn stalls for the last couple of days.
An hour or two a day for two or three days about gets it done.
Sheep, goats, and chickens we have now.
Not as waste-producing as cows or horses.
I was about to say more manageable, too,
but that ain’t true.
I generally don’t mind the work and
find it uniquely satisfying. I love the physicality of it.
The pitch-forking into the barrow, wheeling it to the compost heap.
The absolute earthiness of it, the sharp freshness of the smell.
The very essence of life.
The clean energy it offers our garden and pasture.
The humbling it brings to my muscles and mind.
I take a break and think about fracking.
Industrial mucking, of a sort.
You know, the gouging of the earth.
The use of millions of gallons of water.
Untold toxic chemicals pumped into the ground.
The forever question of what to do with the waste.
Documented dangers and hazards.
Like poisoning peoples’ water supplies.
Releasing carcinogens into the air.
Noise and light and traffic where once there was none.
And for what? Money, of course. But jobs, they also say, as if to appease.
Oh, and energy, power - we’ve got to have that.
These politicians and technocrats do whatever they want.
Now saying they can come onto your land and
build roads and drill, without asking.
Can just show up at your front door and do it.
They ain’t looking out for you and me.
Makes me so mad I could spit.
I do.
And go back to my mucking.
It's far cleaner work.
Kate, Happy Birthday on this your 23rd. May you always play in the dirt. PawPaw, Madison County, NC 2013
(click on photograph to enlarge)
Devony Shelton, Cutshalltown, Madison County, NC 1984
In my last post I spoke about my time with Home Health Nurse, Susan Moore, and this photograph was made during the same assignment. We were visiting with Devony Shelton and her husband who was terminally ill. She had been caring for him for many months and Susan provided support and a willing ear for Mrs. Shelton's concerns.
Sometimes on assignments such as this one, a photographer will make images he knows will never be published, mostly because they don't fit with the story. I sensed this was the case with this picture, but knew it was one I needed to make.
She said she had cut her hair only one time in her life and I asked if I could photograph it. The request pleased her and we walked together to the porch of her single-wide where the angular lines of the trailer provided a contrasting backdrop to the flowing elegance of her hair and posture.
The photograph wasn't used in the story and to my knowledge this is the first time it's been published.
Home Health Nurse Susan Moore with 97-year old George Roberts and his daughter, Gertie Randall, Big Pine, Madison County, NC, 1984.
I spoke with my friends Larry and Sue Savett the other night. Larry and Sue live in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Sue was a Social Worker and Larry an Internal Medicine MD. We had gotten to know each other through a mutual friend and over the course of twenty or more years developed a solid friendship and abiding respect for each other.
In 2002, Larry published a book titled The Human Side of Medicine: Learning What it’s like to be a Patient and What it’s like to be a Physician. The book looks at the complexity of the doctor/patient relationship and offers tools to improve that interaction. Some time before the book was published he called to ask if he could use this photograph in his book. It was an image I had made in the mid-1980s for a story on rural health care initiatives for Southern Exposure Magazine. Writer Millie Buchanan and I did a story on the Hot Springs Health Program, a cutting-edge health delivery system in Madison County that became a model for rural health systems across the state.
I spent a number of days with Home Health Nurse Susan Moore as she made her rounds across the county tending to members of our community. Susan’s manner with her patients was more like a neighbor or family member – listening, open, responsive, encouraging the patient to talk about themselves. She knew, if she could build trust between herself and her patient, and the patient's family, it would benefit the patient’s health. Photographers also know this - that building trust with your subject often produces a better, more open, image.
When teaching, Larry uses this photograph as an example of The Human Side of Medicine. He shows it to his students and asks them to write an essay about what they see in the image. He has shared some of the essays with me and I’m struck by the student’s ability to understand the facts in the photograph while adding their own personal elements to the story they write.
Photography is dependent on facts, an external reality. There has to be something to photograph and photographers generally understand their role is to picture the world around them. As an image-maker I want the viewer to recognize the factual elements in a photograph - the what, why, and where in a picture. But what really excites me is when that evidence sparks the viewer’s memories: That reminds me of a time when we butchered hogs. Or, My mother used to wear her hair like that. Or, That was a hard time for my family. It’s the ability of the photograph to transcend its initial, intended meaning and create new realities that gives the medium its power and uniqueness.
At Our Spring, PawPaw, 2014 05 08
Dirt in our Garden with Potato Plant Shadows, PawPaw, 2014
I love our dirt.
I love most everything about it.
The things you might expect – its smell and texture.
Its touch and the way it sifts through my fingers,
staining them as the soil itself, a reminder.
I’ve had to learn to love our dirt.
It’s not intuitive with me, like it is Leslie.
As a child, cleanliness was valued, dirt avoided.
Hands and nails checked for telltale signs,
washing more of a religion than an actual need.
It took moving here, to the mountains,
to rid the aversion from my life.
Gardening and working tobacco changed that.
Animals, and firewood, and just plain digging.
Now, dirt is everyday, and usual.
I love it under my nails.
How it turns the tips dark.
If you suck on those tips, you taste it.
Grit on your teeth, going down in a smooth swallow.
A cocktail of sorts.
Our dirt is clean.
No chemicals for twenty-five years.
Manure, compost, cover crops, leaves in the fall.
It’s rich. You dig in to a feast of life –
worms a plenty, worms galore.
Garlic in our Garden, PawPaw, 2014.
We grow a small garden now,
we used to grow much more.
To eat food grown in soil you’ve nurtured is
one of life’s true gifts.
I think, “Fresh spinach in the early spring.”
I read about children today,
not knowing where their food comes from,
like me when I was young, but more so.
It’s sad to be without dirt, to lack intimacy with it,
to not know the primacy of its role.
And the bacteria and germs, the stuff that lives in dirt - now they’re saying all that stuff is good for you.
It builds resistance to disease.
Dirt makes us stronger, they say.
I hear my mother, “I don’t believe a word of it.”
Everett Barnett, Marshall, North Carolina 1984
I didn't know Mr. Barnett well at all. But when I lived in my studio space in downtown Marshall in the early 1980s, I would often see him and we would speak. I do know he was a loved and respected part of a community that is not noted for its racial or ethnic diversity. He lived downtown, just off of Hill Street. He served our country during World War II as a member of the 34th Naval Construction Battalion, the famous Seabees, whose motto was Construimus, Batuimus - We Build, We Fight. The Battalion participated in much of the fighting in the Pacific Theatre during the war and the shell casing he is holding is from the invasion of Okinawa in 1945. That battle was one of the most hard fought and bitter fights of the War as Japan was desperately defending its homeland. It was instrumental in bringing the war to an end. I wish I knew more of Everett Barnett and would love for readers to share stories of him.
