Looking back on 2018

In 2018, I resolved the following: to make more portraits, learn to make biscuits from scratch, be a better advocate for women, start running again, write more, spend less time on social media, and to do an assignment for The New York Times.

I don’t know if I made more portraits, but I thought more about the kind of portraits I want to make. OK, maybe I made more portraits. But I’m still learning to make the kind of portraits I want to make.

I didn’t learn to make biscuits from scratch. I’ll likely keep that on my list for 2019.

I tried to be a better advocate for women and to be more mindful of the privilege afforded me by my gender and race. Let me tell you, there is no turning back once you start doing this. I’m better for it and I’m thankful to those closest to me who have given me room to grow.

I didn’t start running again, but I’m feeling the urge. I doubt I wrote more. I doubt I spent less time on social media.

I didn’t do an assignment for The New York Times, but I did do assignments for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. I had work published with ESPN. I did an assignment for NPR (even thought the images were never used). And I completely blew a single-image, quick-turnaround assignment because I didn’t have an SD card in my camera.

Here are some of the things that made 2018 memorable for me:

I took my best friend to Butcher Holler, the home of Loretta Lynn.

I was awarded an honorary certificate in Digital Appalachian Studies from Shawnee State University.

I asked my best friend to marry me on the hill where I spent my childhood and she said yes.

I swam in a river and paddled a few lakes.

I turned around to go back and make pictures.

I stood naked on top of a mountain under an approaching thunderstorm.

I listened as grandparents cried and recounted their struggle adopting their grandchildren because their daughter was addicted and not able to care for them.

I watched the best sunset of the year in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot in Milton, West Virginia.

I downsized. I moved. I let go. And I held on.

I listened. I cried. I laughed. I laughed until I cried. I was wrong often and more quick to apologize. I was proud, but not like the kind in the Bible that turns you bad.

I learned I’ll be a grandfather. My grandfather shaped my world and the thought of bearing that awesome responsibility is hard to put into words.

I woke up with my best friend 363 out of 365 mornings.

I am thankful for every day I am gifted.

Native Tongue

If I go to hell, it won’t be because I didn’t accept Jesus. No, it’d be for the time I chose to talk differently, to give up my accent. I got saved more times than I can count, just in case the last time didn’t take. No, I reckon if I bust hell wide open, it’ll be because I traded my birthright, my native tongue, so they wouldn’t laugh. There are things in this world worse than the kind of hellfire and brimstone the Bible talks about, the kind those who are unfaithful deserve. There’s the kind of damnation that comes about from denying where you’re from, who you are.

I was 15 and they’d ask, “What color is that wall?” and I’d say, “It’s white,” but I’d say it with a few extra i’s in it and they’d all laugh. And I didn’t want the girls to laugh, so white with the extra i’s became white like the way everyone else in the city said it.

Even if you leave your faith behind, leave home behind, you can’t get away from the hills and the kudzu and steeples that dot and cover them. They are there as a reminder that, no matter what, you are anchored to home. The argument could be made that they’re both invasive species – the kudzu and the missionaries that brought religion to the mountains.

The kudzu and the church houses, they might be more forgiving than at first glance as you come and go and toil in the world. They both cover things we all once hoped for, believed in, or at least wanted to. They hide things in plain sight. They were both brought here as a solution to a problem and spread like wildfire. They each tell a story in their own way; tell it quietly and tell it shouting.

If I could go back, I’d tell that lanky mountain boy to hold on to that kind of talk, that the kudzu would listen – extra i’s and all.

Bell County, Kentucky (between Pineville and Middlesboro).

Not an Almost Heaven West Virginia

We tell ourselves the stories we need to hear, need to believe to get by. But I’m tired of getting by. We say Almost Heaven while so many live in downright hell. 

They say, “Why don’t those people just move away and get jobs somewhere else?” They say, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Well, have you ever considered moving away from the only place you’ve ever known, the land that is woven into your DNA? Have you been able to reach the bootstrap attached to the boot on your neck? The boot that tells you if you want to make something of yourself you have to go somewhere else to do it? The boot that tells you coal is king and Jesus saves and just say no to drugs. The boot that has been in your life for so long you forget it’s there sometimes and have to look hard to find it because you’ve grown accustomed to thinking that this is all there is.

You see, Almost Heaven doesn’t complicate the narrative. It doesn’t reconcile colonialism and tourism in a mind. It doesn’t unfurl the banner of the long line of takers and collect the tears of the coal miner’s widow. It doesn’t listen to the kid who might want to leave or might not want to leave but goddamnit just wants to know there’ll be a home to come back to. It doesn’t speak for the countless voices buried at Hawks Nest or answer the question of freedom formed into a brick made by the hands of West Virginia slave after 1863.

West Virginia is my home, my heart, the place I returned to after too many years away. This is where I’ll die and where, until then, I’ll work with you and anyone who wants to see a different West Virginia, not an Almost Heaven West Virginia.

Williamson, Mingo County, West Virginia. 

History, privilege, and reflection

As a white man, it has always been easy to move around in the world, to go where I please, to feel relatively safe, and to have my voice heard. As I’ve started to examine the privilege I have – the privilege I was simply born with and have done nothing to earn – I’ve been asking a lot of questions and trying to wrap my head around some things. 

When I consider how Appalachia is, and has historically been, portrayed, I think of the structures and systems that have been intentionally put in place to “other” Appalachia. When I consider the story of West Virginia and the long history of colonization and rule by extractive industry, I think about the influence of power, money, and fear.

When I think about working to deconstruct the stereotypes of our region, specifically through visual scholarship, I am keenly aware of the challenges involved. I cannot fight against the willful stereotyping of Appalachia without acknowledging the harm that has been done to the region long before it was called Appalachia by white men.

Everywhere I look, I am aware of how history, white history, has been written or rewritten to proclaim the accomplishments of white men, express their benevolence, or justify their acts of murder, rape, theft, war, and expansion, to bring about a civilized society.

I recently did an erasure exercise of this sign in Mingo County to read “Nearby, white leader and white settlements in effect exterminated tribe.”