Beauty & Simplicity: Walking an Old Camera with Instant Film

[Left: my father-in-law, Wayne Justice on a walk on the family property the morning after Christmas. Elgood, West Virginia (Mercer County). Right: the Justice family woodshed. Both photos were made 26 December 2015.]

I'm old enough to remember Polaroid film when it was still as readily available as SD cards are today. Even as a kid, there was something special about the smell of pack film, the pitched whine of the camera as it pushed out the picture, and the wait for the image to appear. I've been spending time with some of the photos from my childhood thanks to my Mom and my aunt Rhonda who have loaned me several family photo albums (also now a thing of the past as most of our photos live on our devices or online). Talk about nostalgia.

A couple of years ago, my good friend Nic Persinger reintroduced me to instant film. Around that same time, I'd picked up a Fujifilm Instax 210, which was a little more similar to the Polaroid cameras I grew up with. Nic suggested I try a Land Camera, one of Polaroid's most popular series. He sent me one to try out (a 1969 model, which you can pick up for about $3) and I've never looked back. The camera shoots pack film, which is still made by Fujifilm, and comes in color (FP-100C) or black and white (FP-3000B), and produces a 3.25" x 4.25" (approximately) print. Film runs about $10 for a box of color film and $25 for black and white. This isn't a how-to article, but rather one that will share my love for these cameras and this film. I also wanted to share some of my favorite pictures I've made with this combination over the last couple of years and a little bit about what I do with these pictures. (These were scanned on an Epson V600 flatbed scanner.)

[Row one, left to right: Ed Shepard, Welch, West Virginia; Doug Dudley, Mingo County, West Virginia; Downtown Williamson, West Virginia; and Baisden, West Virginia. Row two, left to right: Curtis Meade, Red Jacket, West Virginia; Walmart, Kimball, West Virginia; Grant's Supermarket, Princeton, West Virginia; and Baisden, West Virginia.]

I carry my Polaroid in my camera bag whenever I'm in the field. Cumbersome as it is, it's almost always with me. I can say that I've probably given away as many of these pictures as I've kept. I've found them to be wonderful leave-behinds, small mementoes to thank folks when I make their portrait with either my digital or film cameras. If you've never seen the look on a kid's face when they see a Polaroid for the first time, you're missing out. Most adults are still giddy to get a one of a kind print handed to them. There's a real magic to it.

[Row one, left to right: Abandoned church near St. Matthews, South Carolina; Donny Brook Road, Raleigh, North Carolina; Sugar Grove, Virginia; and Bluefield, West Virginia. Row two, left to right: Monongah, West Virginia; Jefferson Davis Highway, Virginia; Cary, North Carolina; and Harlan County, Kentucky.]

Instant film has made a comeback in the last few years. In fact, PDN just reported that Fujifilm's Instax film was the bestselling item in Amazon's camera department over the holidays. There's something about holding a picture you've made. And there's something to giving them away. With so much digital content pushed today, it's a real pleasure to hold an actual photograph. Each picture is unique in and of itself, a true one of a kind. I love that about this process. The pictures are imperfect - beautifully imperfect and individual.

Here are some technical notes about the camera I use. Again, this isn't a how-to article, but I wanted to share some basics.

I have a model 340 Polaroid Land Camera, which I've customized with the state of West Virginia on the camera's cover. At the far right, you can see the modifications Nic made so that the camera now takes three AAA batteries instead of the native 4.5 volt battery. Often with these cameras, batteries have been left inside for decades and have corroded. There are tons of how-to articles and videos on how to modify Land Cameras, which I'll leave up to you to find. As far as battery usage goes, I can say that I've shot hundreds of exposures without changing the batteries a single time.

These cameras are beautifully simple and straightforward. At left, you can see the view window and the focus window. This is a rangefinder, so you compose your image in the view window and use the rangefinder pushbutton to focus (1). When your image is in focus, cock the shutter (3) and press the shutter release (2). That's it. You pull the white numbered tab (which is numbered 4) and you have your print. I usually wait two-three minutes before peeling apart the print and negative. (Note: I've recently peeling my prints away in a manner that leaves the black border - as seen in the first two images at the top. I just like the aesthetic of the border it leaves behind.) Once the prints have completely dried, I store them in archival sleeves by Gaylord Archival. There is also a process by which you can scan the negative, but I haven't tried it. Here's a link to the manual for the Polaroid 340 Land Camera.

Earlier this year, I thought it would be fun to share work with folks and have access to film at the same time. I thought I'd run out of film, then a box slid from underneath my seat. I had an idea which goes like this: If you'd like a Polaroid (Fuji) print, send me a box of film and specify the number you'd like me to send you (just one, selected from 1-10) and when I've made the picture, I'll drop it in the mail to you. If you'd prefer a picture from my archive, that works too. Some local camera shops carry this film. I've also ordered it from B&H or Amazon.

Please limit your selection to one per box of film you send. And holler if you have any questions. Here's to more film and more heartwork in 2016. Thanks!

My Favorite Photobook Buys of 2015

I'm not a fan of "best of the year" lists, but a couple of years ago, I wrote a piece about my favorite photobook acquisitions of the year. Like Christmas decorations, these ridiculous lists start to appear earlier and earlier each year. As with most lists, the "best photobooks of the year" lists are entirely subjective as is this one. What I prefer to do is list the photobooks that have had a significant impact on me as a photographer, writer, and photobook collector and to share some thoughts on each one.

I buy used photobooks when I can. I like to think of where these books have lived before arriving on my shelves, who might've thumbed through the pages in awe or perhaps boredom, and how they might've moved someone else to see the world differently. I buy some books new in the likelihood they'll go out of print (because of such "best of" listicles, which means perhaps I'm contributing to the problem). I've only ever intentionally bought two brand new copies of the same book with the intent on leaving one in the shrink wrap.

I believe photobooks are meant to be handled, pored over, hell, even obsessed over. I love trying to figure out how sequences work (or don't), how text works with (or against) the photographs, and the solitude of leafing through the finished "thing" a photographer has dedicated so much time to putting into the world. So, on with my list of favorite photobook acquisitions of 2015.

The Notion of Family | LaToya Ruby FrazerAperture, 2014, 156 pages.

LaToya Ruby Frazer has had a pretty incredible year and deservedly so (last year included a Guggenheim Fellowship). She was the recipient of the ICP Infinity Award, a MacArthur Grant, a $625,000 prize distributed over five years, and named a TED Fellow. Her first book, The Notion of Family, was published by Aperture last year and is centered on her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania (which is in Appalachia). The book is beautifully produced and is a testament to family, identity, and vision. This book is hands down my favorite photobook acquisition of the year.

"Informed by documentary practices from the turn of the last century, Frazier explores identities of place, race, and family in work that is a hybrid of self-portraiture and social narrative. The crumbling landscape of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a once-thriving steel town, forms the backdrop of her images, which make manifest both the environmental and infrastructural decay caused by postindustrial decline and the lives of those who continue—largely by necessity—to live amongst it." - LaToya Ruby Frazier

One Place | Paul KwileckiUniversity of North Carolina Press and CDS Books of the Center for Documentary Studies, 2013, 272 pages. There are many books dedicated to detailing the lives of conflict photographers, but I can't think of many that focus on four decades of photographing one county. That's right, one county. "I confine myself to the place I was born and raised, not as an arbitrary discipline or to prove that subjects worthy of photographs exist everywhere and in abundance, though it is true that they do, but because Decatur County (Georgia) is home," Kwilecki wrote, "and I know it from my special warp, having been both nourished and wounded by it." His photographs are astounding and show us community fabric in pictures in a way only one can who is so intimately familiar with home can, warts and all as the'd say. With no formal photographic training, Kwilecki began making pictures around 1960. He photographed the deep south, black and white folks, and pursued the notion of home with true passion. Kwilecki's work and the resulting book, published a few years after his death in 2009, have heavily influenced my thought process on making work in Mingo County, West Virginia.

Father Figure | Zun LeeCeiba, 2014, 124 pages. I met Zun Lee at LOOK3 earlier this year and asked him to sign my copy of Father Figure. I don't know that I've ever met a more humble and joyful person. There's so much heart in this book, I can't possibly capture it here. This work strikes a chord with me as a father, but further it's deeply moving to me as someone who grew up without my biological father being in the picture for most of my childhood. All I ever wanted to be was a dad, a good dad. This work is passionate, intimate, and as Jamel Shabaaz describes it, "visual medicine." It challenges stereotypes and asks us to acknowledge men who are all too often dismissed in the media. Teju Cole writes in the introduction, "These are images of love, which is an elusive subject, an almost impossible subject. There is an affection for life in these photographs, an affection for Black life, for fatherhood and childhood, for the tender moment that will soon be gone."

The Nature of Photographs | Stephen ShorePhaidon, 2007, 136 pages. Stephen Shore is arguably one of America's preeminent voices in photography and a pioneer of color work. I've found this book to be invaluable, a great find at a local used bookstore. Shore writes, "In bringing order to this situation, a photographer solves a picture, more than composes one," alongside a photograph made by Nicholas Nixon in Friendly, West Virginia in 1982 (one of my favorites in the book). Though not incredibly lengthy in text, its provides succinct, thoughtful meditations on the photographic works of William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, Berenice Abbott, and many others.

TIS01 | This is Sausage (TIS) BooksTIS Books, 2015, Set of four books, edition of 300 (between 48-60 pages per book). I have to say these folks are up to something really good. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but when I saw this series launch earlier this year, I wanted to get this set of books and I couldn't have been happier. The books are by four different photographers: Tim Carpenter, J Carrier, Nelson Chan, and Carl Wooley, but I love the fact they're all produced in the same color, size, binding, and relative length. Each carries its own unique narrative and theme, but work incredibly well as a set. They're the sort of books you'd be thrilled to have one of, but knowing they're a set of four makes it that much better. There is virtually no text save for the colophon in each of the books, which I find to be well suited for an edition this size. TIS Books is making some great photobooks and I hope that by this time next year, I'll be writing about their production of Steven B. Smith's Waiting Out the Latter Days.

The Mining Photographs | Milton RogovinGetty Publications, 2005, 144 pages. Before I even get to the Rogovin photographs, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the incredibly wonderful introductory essay by Judith Keller. I think it should be required reading for anyone interested in long form work in Appalachia. She writes, "Rogovin's study of community extended beyond neighborhoods in his own northeastern city. With the collaboration of his wife, Anne, a special-education teacher, he undertook a lengthy investigation of Appalachia mining communities, returning to small towns in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky each summer from 1962 until 1971. Through union contacts he found the mines and recorded the men at work. Anne assisted in getting acquainted with the general population; Milton photographed them on their porches, in their yards, on the sidewalks, and in their homes."

In addition to Appalachia, Rogovin photographed miners in Scotland, Germany, China, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia. The Rogovins were friends with the late Dr. Donald Rasmussen, a well-known authority on black lung disease, who passed away earlier this year in West Virginia. Throughout this beautifully edited book, Rogovin captures the pride, dignity, and spirit of the often-overlooked miner. It is a true testament to the working class.

Photographers' Sketchbooks | Stephen McLaren and Bryan FormhalsThames & Hudson, 2014, 320 pages. The list of photographers the duo of McLaren and Formhals enlisted for this books is staggering: Roger Ballen, Jason Eskenazi, Stacy Kranitz, Susan Meiselas, and Alec Soth just to name a few. McLaren writes, "To explore the 'photographic sketchbook' in all its various forms is in one sense a legitimate return to photography's earliest role in the fine arts." He continues, "Photography may be having a bit of a Babel moment, so our intent here is to let the reader see how intelligent practitioners are cutting through the visual noise to make a compelling case for photography's future relevance." No small feat, right? But they offer a dizzying look into the minds and processes of some truly amazing photographers and they do it well. Robin Cracknell's diaries - heartfelt, dark, and not about perfection - are worth the cost of the book alone. This is a book to own, to keep close at hand when you need some motivation, or to simply sit for a spell and say to yourself, "Damn."

The Americans | Robert Frank Scalo (third edition), 1998, 180 pages. Hear me out on this one. This is the first copy of The Americans I've ever owned. Hell, it's the first copy I've ever looked through and I didn't buy it until I was in Athens, Georgia this fall. There have likely been more talks and articles written about this book than you can count, so it's unlikely I'll have any revelations here. What I can say is that I feel like I've reached the age where I can appreciate The Americans more so than at any other point in my life. It's sort of like the difference between drinking shitty beer at a party in high school and sipping fine whisky or bourbon with friends on the front porch; it takes a while to identify and appreciate the difference. This truly is a special book and it's justifiably legendary unlike your high school parties.

Face to Face | Lloyd E. MooreErlewine Design, 2004, 129 pages. This was the surprise book of the year for me. Earlier this year, I started publishing a picture of an Appalachian photobook every Friday (Appalachian Photobook Friday). Someone reached out to me and suggested I check it out. I found a clean, used copy and have found it to be a gem. Lloyd Moore, a lawyer, began making pictures of his clients to gather legal evidence. He started with a 35mm camera and eventually moved to an 8x10. What resulted in the book, Face to Face is the splendor of someone who genuinely loved people and who loved making their pictures. That much is evident when holding this book.

The Whiteness of the Whale | Paul GrahamMACK and Pier 24 Photography, 2015, 240 pages. This is my first Paul Graham book. It combines three of his American series: American Night (1998-2003), a shimmer of possibility (2005-2007), and The Present (2008-2011) and includes essays by David Chandler and Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa. The book feels much larger than its 9x12 size. Perhaps it's the space, the room to breathe, between photographs on the physical pages. Perhaps it's the remarkable essays by Chandler and Wolukau-Wanambwa (one of the smartest damned people I've ever met). Graham has quickly become one of my favorite living photographers. My only complaint about The Whiteness of the Whale is that my copy didn't include the red printed mailing box as advertised.

Songbook | Alec SothMACK, 2015, 144 pages. I had a chance to see the Songbook exhibit earlier this year at LOOK3 in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was impressive. The prints were huge, beautifully framed, and took on a life of their own. When I sit with my copy of Songbook, much of that magnitude transfers to book form as well. It physically feels like a family photo album you'd pull off the shelf at your grandmother's house. And I swear you feel like you're going to see someone you know in at least one of the photographs. It has that sort of familiarity to it. Soth writes, "I became a photographer because I thought I wanted to work alone. But over time, I realized that photography was not just a means for me to communicate with other people, it was also a vehicle for collaboration and community."

Southern Glossary | Ryan SparksSouthern Glossary, 2015, 60 pages. I was pleasantly surprised to get a copy of this in the mail from Ryan Sparks, the force behind Southern Glossary. A little over a year ago, Ryan featured the Looking at Appalachia project on Southern Glossary. In addition to several rounds of emails and a lengthy phone call about photography, writing, and publishing work, I knew Ryan was on to something wonderful. What I didn't know is that he'd produce such an amazing little zine of work from photographers and artists who'd contributed to the Southern Glossary Instagram feed over the past year. It features the work by Nic Persinger, Amanda Greene, Shaun H. Kelly, Jen Ervin, and many others along with a great essay - "Southern Identity Crisis" - by Brad Rhines. (Full disclosure: this zine was a gift and not a purchase.)

Sour Vanilla | Aaron CanipeAaron Canipe and Empty Stretch, 2015, 34 pages. Aaron's latest zine was another mailbox surprise received just a few days ago. I've spent quite a bit of time with it and I have to say it's quite something. As with all of Aaron's work I've seen in person, it's thoughtful, well-designed, and leaves me wanting more. Combined with Canipe's photos are text excerpts from Flannery O'Connor's "The Partridge Festival" (hence the title Sour Vanilla). "They sat silently, looking at nothing until finally they turned and looked at each other. There each saw at once the likeness of their kinsman and flinched." (Full disclosure: this zine was a gift and not a purchase.)

Seeing Appalachia | John Ryan Brubaker

I learned of John Ryan Brubaker's work through a mutual friend, Emma Fisher, Tamarack Artisan Foundation's program director. Before I even saw the work, I was taken by the process of the work. More and more these days, I'm interested in how work is made and after learning that John Ryan used acid mine drainage as a central component of his series 'On Confluence,' I wanted to learn more. John Ryan not only shares images from the series, but also images from the field as the work was made.

(Editor's note: for the last three and a half years, I've written the series titled 'Looking at Appalachia' here on my blog. Since launching the Looking at Appalachia project in February 2014, I've considered renaming this series to create a clear separation between my personal writing and the project. This installment is the first under the new series name 'Seeing Appalachia.' Thanks for reading and for your continued support.)

Now on to John Ryan's work. I asked him to introduce it and talk about his process a bit.

On Confluence Walks down the North Fork

The North Fork Blackwater River runs past Thomas, West Virginia before joining the Blackwater proper in the canyon downstream. Thomas developed as a coal town in the early 20th Century, but as the mines were abandoned they filled with water which continues to drain into the river today. The mine void currently covers 1100 acres and discharges an average of two million gallons of water per day into the North Fork. The drainage has a pH in the 3.0 – 5.0 range and contains heavy concentrations of iron and aluminum. This water dissolves heavy metals and creates acid mine drainage, which is detrimental to river ecosystems, rendering them generally unfit for life, recreation, or consumption.

The images in this project were shot during a number of walks in and around the North Fork. As most of the river is difficult to access the process required walking through the riverbed directly. The prints were made using an iron-based photographic process called the Van Dyke Print. This process uses acidic water as its developing agent, making the contaminated portions of the North Fork an ideal location for creating prints.

The works, exhibited earlier this year for the first time at the Carnegie Hall Museum Gallery in Lewisburg, West Virginia, were processed directly in river water effected by acid mine drainage and have absorbed traces of the same heavy metals and mine runoff as the North Fork Watershed itself.

For the past four years I have split my time between the 500-person Appalachian town of Thomas, West Virginia and the million-person city of Brussels, Belgium. During that time the majority of my photographic work was shot and conceptualized in the urban environment and then printed and produced over the summer in my studio in Thomas. My recent projects, 'Maps for Getting Lost' and 'Every Path is Viable' deal with passageways, physical infrastructure and movement through urban space. They incorporate walking as artistic practice, GPS tracking and multi-exposure images of intersections and transit points. While considering a project based in the landscape of West Virginia I was drawn to the river as the organic, geographic equivalent to a transit grid. The lines created on the landscape by water are quite different than those carved out by public transportation and city streets, but they serve similar purposes for me artistically. They provide a fixed, finite space in which to move and observe with a camera.

By researching the history and route of the North Fork I began to understand the immensity of the damage done to this body of water. As is so often the case in West Virginia, the landscape here is scarred by resource extraction. Much of the river appears clear and healthy, with little sign of impact by mine drainage, but other sections are opaque and disconcerting shades of blue-grey or orange. I also became aware of its inaccessibility, as most of the shore is hidden within a dense growth of trees and uninviting thickets. After many failed attempts to follow the shore I decided to walk directly in the riverbed, submerging myself in the water and engaging with it physically as my subject. I consulted with local environmental experts to be sure the toxicity levels weren’t overtly dangerous to me. Ultimately, the photographs in this series were made on a number of day-long walks starting in the city of Thomas and ending at a waterfall downstream.

I chose to use the Van Dyke printing process for these works because it allowed me to work directly with the chemical nature of photography. It took months of experiments with chemistry, paper, exposure and negative density to reach the result I was after. I wanted the prints to absorb heavy metals from the water and to have a physical presence that is often lost in the presentation of photographs. A small run of the river with the ideal pH level served as my outdoor darkroom. I exposed the paper using the sun and developed the images directly in the river. The prints were fixed in a solution of sodium thiosulfate, returned to the river for rinsing and then dried on the shore. I'm curious how they will behave over time, but I've embraced the possibility of them shifting in color or density as they age. They are, after all, organic objects: paper, chemistry, water and light.

This project was supported by the Tamarack Artisan Foundation. It will be shown again in Thomas, WV in the Spring of 2016. You can see more of his work here and follow him on Instagram at @jrbrubaker.

All images © John Ryan Brubaker and are used with permission.

TAKING LIBERTIES, TAKING SHORTCUTS, AND TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE

VICE sent two photographers to Appalachia and all we got are these cheap, damaging stereotypes?

In a recent interview, photographer Bruce Gilden said, “…you have to be sneaky to get the picture…” He said other things about respecting his subjects, his need to get very close and that only by veering into abstraction could he get closer. Let us not mistake being close for being sympathetic, though. Outside land-speculators came to Appalachia decades ago. They got so close as to tear into the land. Then they took it elsewhere … and sold it. Outside land-speculators had to be sneaky to get Appalachian coalfield landowners to sign away their mineral rights.

Taking a portrait, of course, is not an abuse on the same scale as taking land.But it is still taking. And just because Bruce Gilden’s in-your-face ambush approach works on bustling city streets doesn’t mean it flies elsewhere. Gilden speaks persuasively about his interactions with folk and stands behind — professionally and literally — his hard-flash and the caricature portraits that result. In some ways, I admire Gilden’s repeated defense of his controversial approach and his repeated willingness to field questions, but still I am not convinced and I don’t think I ever will be. Here’s why. People in different regions and of different histories have very different relationships to the camera and respond accordingly. Gilden’s one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t fit in Appalachia.

Gilden’s latest jaunt in the current issue of Vice (Vol. 22, No.7) is one of more than a dozen portfolios that make up the 2015 Vice Photo Issue. So, it’s worth noticing that Gilden’s portraits are not illustrations for a regular article; they were commissioned for an issue devoted to photography.

Shot over the weekend over June 6th/7th, the series titled “Two Days in Appalachia” includes congregants at the Kingdom Come’s Old Regular Baptist Church in Premium, KY, men at a prayer breakfast gathered at Covenant Mountain Mission Bible Camp in Jonesville, VA, and children and adults at the Harlan County Poke Sallet Festival. In the same issue is “There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down”, a series of images of church-goers in various Appalachian towns made by photographer Stacy Kranitz.

My assessment of Gilden, Kranitz, their guiding philosophies and work differs somewhat. My criticism of one doesn’t always apply to the other, but for the purposes of critiquing Vice’s decision to assign the two photographers jointly to the region and to run their work back to back, you may assume that my laments in this case apply generally to publication, editors and, yes, both photographers.

Screengrab from the online presentation of the 2015 Vice Photo Issue.

The 2015 Vice Photo Issue is,according to Vice photo editor Matthew Leifheit, “a testament to the enduring power of photography to understand the stories of our lives.” If only. Leifheit goes on to explain that his department teamed up with Magnum Photos by “sending out young photographers out on assignment together with Magnum members, other times emerging artists were influenced by the history of great photographers who have contributed to Magnum’s legacy. Although the approaches to documentation are diverse, we believe both established and emerging photographers benefit from sharing pages.” They also partnered with Magnum’s non-profit arm, Magnum Foundation, to share the work of their regional grantees.

Sending Kranitz and Gilden out together failed.

“The past few days have been hard,” wrote Kranitz on Instagram on June 7th. “I have been on assignment with another photographer, Bruce Gilden. He and I are at odds with the way we make our work. I watched him make portraits and aggressively enter my shot to get his own, while telling me ‘this is my shoot, you are just here’ I listened as he said disparaging things about people, I listened to his dissatisfaction with people being to [sic] ‘plain’ and late last night I could no longer stand by and continue to feel good about being bullied. He humiliated me in front of a group of church goers and I feel that I may have taken a stand at the wrong moment. That I was not being considerate or mindful of my surroundings either. I don’t hate Bruce or his work but I think turning people into what you want them to be, turning people into ‘self-portraits’ of yourself is complicated and dangerous especially in a place with a history of extraction.”

This principled and somewhat vulnerable reflection confirms everything I have thought about Gilden and his personality. It reflects some things I’ve come to learn about Kranitz. Kranitz deals, here and elsewhere, in introspection and flexibility of thought that Gilden never does.

My relationship with Kranitz is strained to say the least and the antipathy between us has been aired in public on occasion. Our commitment to dialogue about photography in Appalachia and our conviction of thought is matched. We’re both steadfast and that contributes to the friction between us.

I want to flag this history between Kranitz and I in order that I may follow-up and say that this article is not a witch-hunt directed at her. This article is a harsh criticism of an abusive project that was rushed, ill-advised and — given the ingredients — doomed to failure. As the liaison (producer?) for the project, Kranitz bears some of the responsibility. Mostly, though, I fault Vice.

A Recipe for Disaster and for Internet Buzz

Leifheit, Vice photo editor, never responded to my request for comment. Not knowing the specifics of the decision-making behind the Appalachia portfolios, I’m left to hazard a guess. GILDEN + KRANTIZ + APPALACHIA = CLICKBAIT, maybe?

By pairing Gilden (aggressive, abrasive, and loud-mouthed shooting style) with Kranitz (drug and alcohol-fueled Appalachia-is-one-big-off-camera-flash-shirtless-party style), Vice knew it was ordering fireworks, or cheap controversy, or both. Neither portfolio shows me anything new.Both reinforce the idea that Appalachia is somehow an exotic location for photographers to drop in and use people as props. They aren’t connected to any other purpose than being self-serving. In other words, they draw attention to the photographer more than the people and communities being photographed.

Gilden, here, substitutes Appalachians in to replace the nameless folks in his last set of portraits. Kranitz’s portfolio was made up, partly, of old images from existing series we’ve seen before. Gilden’s an old dog and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Kranitz on the other hand iswrestling non-stop with her image-making, her presence, and the history of representation in Appalachia. Without wanting to sound patronizing, I think Kranitz is self-taught in new tricks — the more she learns the more she realizes she doesn’t know. She’s light years ahead of others, but as well as running rings around the pack she also makes wrong turns. Her Vice offering here is confused.

“I struggled with the complexity of translating the value and power of religion to urban populations, which have long participated in the characterization of rural people as simplistic and naive,” wrote Kranitz in her accompanying statement. Why does this need translation? And how does her series of images do anything to work against the characterization of rural people? We’ve all seen the visual tropes that cue the most widely known visual “facts” about Appalachia. What is it about this work that stretches us to see it differently? I appreciate Kranitz’s long-form work and commitment in the region, I believe she is on the verge of shifting to pursue something bigger than herself, but she keeps getting in the way.

Kranitz declined to speak with me for this article about this Vice assignment. She believes my decision to not invite her to serve on the board of Looking at Appalachia, an organization I founded, was an attempt to silence her voice. Since then, she has characterized me as running a“tyrannical crusade as gatekeeper of who can and cannot make work in the [Appalachia] region.” I disagree with her assessment of my work with Looking at Appalachia. I disagree that I’ve silenced her voice. I did not ask her to join Looking at Appalachia in an official capacity for reasons that I don’t care to make public.

Putting these things aside I realize this moment is a missed opportunity to speak with a young photographer with whom I (and Looking at Appalachia) share common concerns. I would not expect the same level of engaged conversation with others. Leifheit, I’d suggest, gave more time and consideration to his project PPIX, wherein he photographed things he peed on for 30 days than he did for Gilden’s “Two Days in Appalachia.”

Shut Down by Magnum, Ignored by Gilden

I suspect both Vice and Magnum both spent more time conceiving, planning, executing, and editing the Gilden assignment than he actually spent in Appalachia. Perhaps that’s the case sometimes if you’re a news agency on a tight deadline, reporting on time-sensitive issues. That’s hardly the case with this work. Why send Bruce Gilden to a part of the country that’s been visually stereotyped more often than not, to shoot in a style that, albeit bold, is incredibly impersonal and is stripped from nearly any context? Unfortunately, I cannot fully answer that question because despite a thoughtful and productive 45-minute telephone conversation with Cameron Cuchulainn, Magnum Photos Special Projects Manager, the follow-up email with specific questions I was requested to send, and sent, was met with zero response. Nothing. Zip. Later, I received a courtesy call from a reliable source who informed me the stonewalling was deliberate. I was shut down by Magnum. The fact that no one would respond in any official capacity to this type of work speaks volumes. I am beside myself, though I probably shouldn’t be, that an agency like Magnum would put their integrity, and that of its members, on the line in such a fantastically amateur way.

Am I saying that Gilden can’t or shouldn’t make work there? Absolutely not. But if he’s going to make work there, he can’t be the least bit surprised if there’s a strong negative response to his style of shooting and his presentation of these folks in an international magazine.

How is this work any different from the throngs of photographers who’ve made this sort of devoid-of-context work? Bruce, if you have an answer please get in touch; your studio manager said he passed my email along, but that was weeks ago. As with Magnum, I have no idea what you’re thinking.

It’s a slippery slope when you come to a region often misrepresented or only represented in a certain light, and use people as props. No amount of contrived language, heady MFA-speak, or artistic vision can make up for any of that. I don’t care what agency you work for. In the end, it’s the people who allow us into their lives that matter. People aren’t theories. We have no feedback from the people pictured. Will they receive copies of the magazine so they can see how they’re composed, framed, and displayed? Was it made clear who the photographers were on assignment for?

Vice catastrophically catapulted two headstrong photographers into Appalachia. Two different photographers, people, and approaches with unsurprisingly the same outcome.

There are photographers who want to be looked at and celebrated and there are photographers who want to see people and celebrate them through photography, in context, in a way that honors the people. Sadly, Gilden and Kranitz miss out on the latter — far more so Gilden than Kranitz. To Krantiz’s credit, she is devoted to making work in the region and spending lengthy blocks of time in Appalachia. I believe, like many of us, her work is evolving, but when I see it side-by-side Gilden’s in Vice presentation, I struggle to see a difference.

Appalachia is big enough for all of us to be making work that matters, work that can effect change — not only in us, but inside and outside the region. But this isn’t it. As they should, these images will be lost in the noise created by a media outlet more concerned with clicks and buzz than the people photographed in their stories.

More takers in a long line of takers.

(This article first appeared on Vantage on 31 July 2015.)

©Roger May, 2015. All rights reserved.