Rob Amberg: Sodom Laurel Album

Sodom Laurel Album : Junior

Junior is uncanny in front of the camera. He always knows where to be and how to look. It’s all unspoken, and not done for the camera. Junior is who he is. Unpretentious. Open. Transcendent. He doesn’t see the camera, but simply presents himself to the world. I want my photographs to be believable, clear, and intuitive.

Dellie’s word for my photographs was “plain.” I like the ordinary. For me, it’s in the ordinary that we find the universal truths. With Junior, the challenge for me as photographer is to be as open, relaxed, and visionary in my picture-making as he is in his presentation of those elemental truths. When that happens, we seem like alter egos, telling these stories, revealing these lives, for I too feel revealed. My photographs of Junior offer me the opportunity to find something of myself. He is less the subject of my images, but more accurately, a co-conspirator, the photographs an expression of our relationship. If that is the case, then whose photographs are they? Who decides when to show them, or if to sell them? I feel humbled by Junior, by his candor, lightness and trust; so free of expectation and judgment; always so pleased to see me. “Who is that feller?” He shouts out. “Who is that feller? Why, it’s Rob Hamberger.”

I’ve always been attracted to Junior and, for a time, a part of me even wanted to be like him. His ability to take everything one day at a time. His sense of place and the knowledge that he will be in that same place five, ten, fifteen years from now. His intuitive response to life, like a chameleon, changing his look and temperament to fit each situation, always with an eye toward survival. But Junior also repelled me. His slovenliness. The state of his room. His refusal to bathe or brush his few remaining teeth, pieces of which occasionally just broke off in his mouth. His love of TV wrestling.

We enjoy each other’s company. Sometimes we work together. We go places. We talk and he confides. I rarely do. Our friendship is strong, but sporadic. It’s totally up to me and I am inconsistent in the practice of it. He never calls. And if he did I wonder what we would say to each other. Our friendship seems dependent on a physical presence.

Junior is atypical: gentle, smiling, open, non-violent, unique, changing, out-of-step, colorful.

At the Asheville Art Museum reception for Sodom Laurel Album, and at our party too, Junior displayed a confidence and grace that I wouldn’t have believed possible. He hugged every woman he was introduced to - not with an awkward, groping embrace that one might imagine from an illiterate mountain man who has never known a woman. But rather, with lightness and a quality of restraint that left women smiling, perhaps wondering why all men couldn’t be so gentle. At the party he danced for three hours straight. He danced with women and men. He danced by himself. He says he had never danced before in his life, yet there he was, doing an Appalachian buck dance to the likes of the Rolling Stones and John Fogerty. When dancing with me his face was pure joy - playful, teasing, wanting me to experience the same exuberance that he was feeling, to dance harder, almost out of control. But by himself his face was insular, sometimes pained and far away. Religious, mystical, trancelike - like people speaking in tongues.

Vince Vilcinskas, who is married to one of Dellie’s granddaughters, told me that he thought I was the most important person in Junior’s life. Dellie had saved him as a child, and his brother Willard continued to house him to this day. But it was me who had given his life meaning and allowed him to tell his story. And I have seen Junior reinvent himself as a result of our friendship. Junior taking airplane rides. Junior at the Art Museum. Junior as dancer. As kisser of women. A signer of autographs. Junior reveling in the positive attention. Junior as folk hero.

What is my responsibility in this? Do I protect him or turn him loose? I was nervous about having him at the opening reception. Not about how he would act, but nervous about how people would act toward him. Putting him in the limelight. Maybe doing interviews.

How would this momentary fame alter his life? But what gives me the right to even contemplate shielding him? Isn’t that reminiscent of Dellie’s protection that he grew to resent so much? Junior hopes the book will be made into a movie and only wonders who will play him.

But I’m also regularly reminded of how tenuous my relationship with Junior is. Communication and understanding are truly difficult with him, and he is easily influenced by others. So, while Sodom Laurel Album had indeed allowed Junior to tell his story, “give his life meaning,” in Vince’s words, and provided him with the same modest royalty I received - “I bought a new tiller with it,” he said - it also gave rise to jealousy and feelings of inequity.

Sodom Laurel, along with other small indigenous, often rural, communities, has been thoroughly explored for its cultural treasures. Its ballad singers are legendary and much documented on albums and in film, photographs, and literature. The community’s cultural mores – its sense of place and values that emphasize land and family – place it in another time, which makes it interesting for anthropologists, musicians, documentarians and writers, and cultural tourists. Invariably, the people who produce the books and albums and films are “not from around here;” they’re often young; and sometimes ignorant of local sensibilities regarding what many believe is cultural strip-mining. There is a perception of people getting rich from their songs, words and images.

Junior is not immune to those feelings, despite the strength of our relationship. During one recent visit in which I was bringing him a royalty check for sale of some prints, Junior accused me of getting rich from the book. He said people had seen me stuffing fistfuls of money into my pockets. He then claimed I had used the money to buy a house and piece of property in the community that Dellie had always told him would be his. “I heared about that place you bought,” he said. “I been checking up on you. Your name is all over that deed down in that courthouse.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------