I hope you are easing into the New Year. It has been a long time since I last reached out with news. I wanted to share some of what I have been working on this past year and hope you will do the same. My work has kept me anchored during long months of isolation. I am grateful for the ways photography can provide insight into the human condition.
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NEWS:
Guggenheim Fellowship
I feel fortunate to be able to focus on making work during such a challenging time. I am thankful to the Guggenheim Foundation for embracing my art and ideas. I almost gave up on everything in 2019. I lost my confidence and my strength while struggling to make a living as a full time artist. This fellowship has done so much to rebuild faith in the choices I have made to live and breathe my work.
Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development Grant Award
I am grateful to receive funding to return to filmmaking with a new project about the legacy of Harry Caudill and the ways representations of poverty in Appalachia have empowered exploitation instead of remedying it.
Magnum Foundation: US Dispatches
I received funding from the Magnum Foundation and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project to develop a story about rural hospital closures in Appalachia. This work was published in the Nation Magazine.
National Geographic Covid-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists
I am currently working on an expanded version of the hospital closure story in partnership with National Geographic and 100 days in Appalachia. The fund distributes support to Journalists producing stories on the inequities that COVID-19 has brought to light.
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COMMISSIONS:
National Geographic, Snake Handlers Put Their Faith in God
GQ, Jack Harlow
The Nation, Appalachia’s Hospital Closures are a Slow-Motion Health Care Emergency
ProPublica, The Elk, the Tourists and the Missing Coal Country Jobs
Time, Rural Hospitals are Dying
The Washington Post, Seeking Power in Jesus Name
Politico, When the Culture Wars hit Fort Wayne
Vanity Fair, Hard Times in the Big City
Wall Street Journal, Reopening a Theme Park is a Topsy Turvy Ride
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EXHIBITIONS:
Devour the Land, Harvard Art Museum
I am grateful to the Harvard Art Museum for acquiring images from my project Fulcrum of Malice. The photographs will be part of an exhibition curated by Makeda Best, opening in the fall. The group exhibition explores War and American Landscape photography since 1970. The show is comprised of works by 53 artists including Robert Adams, Sheila Pree Bright, Joshua Dudley Greer, Lucas Foglia, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Jin Lee, Susan Meiselas, Richard Misrach and Eli Reed.
Bronx Documentary Center - Trump Revolution: Climate Crisis
Fulcrum of Malice, asks us to acknowledge our complicit role in systemic racism through our dependence on plastics and petroleum. It tells the story of one communities fifty year fight against environmental racism in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This work was part of a group exhibition addressing former president Trump's overturning of decades of American environmental policy with work by Kadir van Lohuizen, Yuri Kozyrev, Katie Orlinsky, Bryan Thomas and Marcus Yam.
Photoville - We Women
My work on healthcare in medically underserved communities across Appalachia is featured alongside an incredibly roster of projects that illustrate the power of artists working to find common ground and solutions to critical problems facing America today. The outdoor exhibition took place at the Brooklyn Bridge park and will travel across the country during the coming year.
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WRITING:
Burnaway, Christy, Wanda, Stacy
I wrote an essay about the strange cultural residue that attracts me to the Smoky Mountains for Burnaway Reader - Laws of Salvage. I examine representations of the archetypal mountain women - the maw maw, the granny witch, the spinster, the midwife, the missionary, the glamorous country singing buxom beauty and how they speak to parts of me. I write about Dolly Parton, the Walker sisters of Little Greenbrier, Doris Ullman, Selu the Corn Mother, historians Kathy Kahn and Jessica Wilkerson, the writers Wilma Dykeman and Catherine Marshall and the powerlessness of the lead character in Barbra Loden's film masterpiece Wanda. The photographs and text are part of a personal guide that documents my life in the mountains situated in the tenuous space between the real and the imaginary.
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INTERVIEWS:
Float Magazine - Art as Life
In this interview you can learn lots of obscure details about my life. For example: I list every place I have ever lived including my car. I talk about how the pandemic has effected me and why I live in Smithville, Tennessee. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of being a female photographer, the erasure of the distinction between my personal life and my professional life and the time I went speeding down a highway in an impounded disco themed holler rocket.
PH Museum - A Rural, Working Class Rebellion
In this interview I speak with Laurence Cornet about my attempts to carve out a new photographic path, combining an array of languages to both confirm and undo stereotypical representations of the Appalachian region of the United States.
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