A Tale of Two Pictures

 

I went to a benefit for Donnie Norton a couple of weeks ago at the Walnut Fire Department out on Hwy. 25-70, west of Marshall. Donnie has had some serious health issues over the last couple of years and had to retire from his job as an asphalt roller with APAC.  I’ve known Donnie and his family since 1975 - he is one of Dellie Norton’s great-grandchildren - and I knew everyone would be comfortable with me making photographs.

I especially wanted to make photographs of Donnie with his grandson Elijah, which I did. I was thinking to do a pretty standard portrait, framed tightly with little or no background, both people looking straight into the camera. I was shooting with my digital Canon SLR.

This first photograph is close to ideal – proud grandfather securely holding his tentative grandson. Donnie is a big, broad man, but my distance from him and the focal length of the lens keep him from seeming imposing. It’s a warm image, in both tone and feeling. It’s happy and optimistic and consistent with a classic genre of photographs. It’s been done millions of times and most of us have similar images in our scrapbooks or on our Facebook pages. I knew the family would love it, and they did.

Those situations usually demand a series of exposures. Facial expressions, especially with children, change so quickly that a photographer will generally not rely on a single image. He wants a number of pictures to look at before he chooses the best one. That was my situation with Donnie and Elijah. Eleven frames later, probably less than two minutes, I made this second photograph, which has a totally different feel than the first one.

The obvious difference is I chose to present this second one in black and white. Stripped of the warmth and distraction of the color, the photograph is all emotion. I got closer and tighter, which immediately makes Donnie appear larger than life. With a small tilt of his head, a slightly different camera angle, and dead seriousness of his eyes, he appears ominous. Elijah, sans pacifier, has evolved from tentative to fearful and his grandfather, while still in the same secure posture, now seems to be protecting his grandson from an imminent threat.

What interests me is the camera’s ability to fashion the message from a picture. Virtually nothing had changed about the emotion of the situation from one image to the next. Yet, with only minor alterations in technique and camera placement, a radically different storyline develops, one more powerful and ambivilent than the first. 

We like to think the camera doesn’t lie and I think there is truth to that statement. But I also believe a picture is worth a thousand words and oftentimes those words can be contradictory, not necessarily truthful, or complete regarding any particular situation. 

 

Hero - Wendell Berry

 

I was on staff and freelanced for the Rural Advancement Fund for many years during the 1980s and 1990s. The non-profit, farm advocacy organization had its beginnings during the Great Depression as the National Sharecroppers Fund, and when I began working with them in 1985, they were approaching their fiftieth Anniversary as an active voice for farmworkers and small family farms.

A number of events were created to celebrate the Anniversary and broaden their message. One was a Citizen’s Hearing on Agriculture that was held at US House of Representatives in 1987. One of the citizens was the much-noted author, scholar, activist, and farmer, Wendell Berry. I was photographing the event for RAF and made this photograph of Mr. Berry while he was delivering his testimony. Later, we sent a copy of the print to Berry as a thank you and he used it as the author’s photograph on his novel Remembering.

For those of you who don’t know Wendell Berry and his work, his credentials and accomplishments are near impossible to list. Berry’s 1977 book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture was instrumental in my evolution of thought about community and place. It should be required reading for everyone. Wikipedia offers a good accounting of Berry’s life and work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Berry

I was a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam War, one of many thousands of Americans opposed to that war in particular, and all war in general. In 1968, Berry delivered a “Statement Against the War in Vietnam” during the Kentucky Conference on the War and Draft at the University of Kentucky. It was a courageous act in that place and time and continues to resonate today.

We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people' by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the ‘truth' of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. . . . I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.

More Feels Right

Troublesome Gap on the Day of My Separation, Madison County, NC, 1983.

I had very thoughtful responses to my blog post of a couple of weeks ago titled “representative.” In the entry, I expressed the difficulty in finding words or pictures that are truly typical or characteristic of Madison County given the diversity that now exists in our mountain community. I suggested that one common thread for the vast majority of residents is the place “just feels right” and that perhaps this is the most accurate and true representation of place.

Grant Trevor, an old friend and long-term newcomer to the county, expressed a concern that what “felt right” about Madison when we moved here decades ago – the isolation, the sense of community, and the sheer beauty – continues to be a part of the place forty years in the future. Pac McLaurin, a photographer and instructor from Valle Crucis who moved to the region fourteen years ago, spoke of the complexity of the words “feels right,” and how it’s different for everyone. He also spoke of the changes occurring in Watauga County that have diminished his own sense of place.

I do a lot of driving with my work. In the past year, I’ve made trips north to New England, south to Florida, west to Kentucky and Arkansas, and east to Winston-Salem and Durham. I enjoyed each of these places, some more familiar than others, and the people I met there. There were elements in each place that felt good, but also things that kept it from being a place I would want to live. The heat, the cold, the bugs, the noise, too many people, too big, can’t see the stars, crummy air and water, too conservative – it’s always a combination of ingredients that keep places from just feeling right.

But driving home from any direction, there are specific points on the highway where things seemingly change – mile marker 75 on I-40 and Sams Gap on I-26, for example. In each of these locations, the air suddenly feels cleaner and crisper, the smell is more alive and vibrant, and my vision is stimulated by the uniqueness of what I’m seeing. It’s a physical and sensual response and my body unconsciously relaxes with the knowledge that I’ve arrived home to my spot. It’s a feeling that has been consistent over my forty years of living here regardless of the changes, both good and bad, that have come to our place.

On Lower PawPaw, Madison County, NC, 2012.

Benjamin - Felice trentatre compleanno.

 

 

Bambino numero uno con la varicella.

 

 

As parents we are loath to admit this,

But our first children hold a special place.

In our hearts.

In our minds.

In our imaginations.

 

For men, if the first is a son, they become

the gift of maturation. In them,

the manchild and man to be, we

see ourselves, all we were, and

all we must become.

It’s sobering.

 

You do what you can and

weather the chickenpox, the rat house, the divorce, and new life.

You took steel drum class in high school,

instead of my choice of Latin.

But took Italian in college. I so like that.

We grow older and into our own selves.

In ways and places no one could have predicted.

And we leave, and come back, and meet up.

 

And we always like what we see.

Alla casa de le topi.

 


 In Arizona e in Portland, Oregon.

 

 

 

 

Mom's Birthday

 

 

Mom and Me, Silver Spring, Maryland, 1948.

Had she lived, my mother would have been ninety-two years old today. She is twenty-seven in this photograph and I was about eight months old. We are on the porch of my grandmother's house on University Boulevard West, where we lived until I was about three. I am the oldest of her four children.

My mother was a good, strong-willed woman who wanted the best for her children. She instilled all of us with a drive for success that was not untypical coming from a first generation adult of immigrant parents. And while all of us have been successful in our individual careers and lives, none of us turned out to be quite what she anticipated. Instead of businessmen and lawyers, she got artists, teachers, homemakers, and librarians. And instead of staying put in the Washington, DC, area as she would have wished, all of us chose to live elsewhere.

So, as I look at this photograph of my mother helping me stand and take my first tentative steps, I'm reminded of the strong role she played in providing me with the security, self-confidence, and desire that have brought me where I am today. Thanks Mom, and Happy Birthday.

 

 

 

 

Representative

 

While creating the poster for the Madison County Stories exhibit, someone asked if my photograph, Moosehead, Paw Paw, Madison County, NC, 2012, was representative of the county and should be included on the poster. As a rule I think decisions like this are best left to the artist although the question itself raises other legitimate questions about our county and community. Who are we today, in 2013? How has our community changed and stayed the same? Who are our neighbors? What does the land around us mean to us? And how do we represent our place in an honest and accurate way?

There are no easy answers, of course. And they deserve far more time than one simple blog entry can offer. I have some immediate thoughts to share though and will be raising these questions again in subsequent entries. I’m hoping some of you readers will share your ideas also.

When I moved to Madison County forty years ago I believed this to be the most welcoming place I had ever been. It was also the most homogeneous. The local population shared a consistent set of values and traditions that included love of family, land, country, and religion. Most people farmed, or at least, gardened, milked, kept chickens, and heated with wood. And with few exceptions, local residents were warm and engaging and pleased to have new, young people moving into the community and expressing interest in the local culture. Most of us “fereigners,” as Dellie would refer to us, were adopted by local families who taught us skills, introduced us to neighbors and family, and became lifetime friends. Such a gift.

Madison County was a foreign place for many of us newcomers, too. We had come from large cities and cosmopolitan areas with more amenities and the smallness of the place was revelatory for us. Everyone knew each other here; and everyone seemed to know everyone’s business. It was a dry county and religious expression played an important role in most people’s lives. The local dialect and manner of speech were challenging and, like most farming communities, it lived by the rhythms of nature. It was often said that when you set foot in Madison County you stepped back fifty years. That sense of time standing still appealed to a lot of us.

The county has changed radically since the 1970s, as has the rest of the country. We have many new neighbors and I’m struck by the sheer numbers and diversity of people moving in and committing themselves to a place they likely knew little about. Modern technologies and better road access have linked us with wherever we want to be in the world, which has opened the entire county and its people to new ideas and non-traditional values. Change and transition are difficult for any community to accept, but I think more so in small, tight-knit places like our own.

When I ask new people why they’ve moved to Madison County, most simply say, “The place just feels right.” It’s a defining sentiment about the county and one shared by newcomers and locals alike. It’s interesting to me that despite our differences in look, lifestyle, thought, and belief, we are here in Madison County for essentially the same reason. It Just Feels Right. Perhaps that is our best and most accurate representation of  place. 

Thank You

 

I want to thank everyone for your support of my work. I am touched and humbled. We reached a new milestone in March with 1,290 unique visitors to my blog and website with almost 5,000 page views. The number of subscribers has also been increasing at a steady clip. 

I also want to thank Jamie Paul for his editing skill, tech savviness, ideas, and mostly for being the nag that he is in terms of keeping me moving forward with the blog postings.

I've come to thoroughly love blogging and have said often over the last few months that it could be the perfect medium of expression for me. It allows me the opportunity to combine my lifelong love of writing with my photography in short vignettes that are both fun and challenging to work with.

So, again, thank you for all your support. Tell your friends and neighbors. And I'll try to keep them coming.

Seldom Scene - A Privy Is the Place To Be

 

Big Pine, Madison County, NC, 1979.

 

I don’t mind an outhouse.

I’ve used them off and on

during my time in Madison County.

I like them for their simplicity.

 

I’ve read of cultures that believe

moving your bowels inside the house

is unclean and uncivilized. Imagine.

 

The flies and creatures of summer to contend with.

And stomach issues in winter are no fun,

especially with children.

 

I like an outhouse on a cold winter morning.

Cold enough for a union suit - the kind

with the flap in back that you unbutton.

If you roll up the fabric from the flap

it solves the problem of a cold toilet seat.

 

If you’ve built your outhouse with a good view,

with maybe a glass door.

Or perhaps an engaging novel is in your life.

A privy is the place to be.

 

It’s uses no energy.

Shavings and lime, wood ash, are all you need.

 

I recognize the stigma attached.

And how far we’ve come as a modern society

that we don’t have to shit in the woods,

or in a hole out back.

They’re not for everyone, I know.

A major city without indoor plumbing would be hard.

 

But here in the woods, with few people around.

An outhouse feels right.

In touch with yourself, the land, and the elements.

A place to ponder and reflect.

 

Isaac and Robbie Gunter

I was introduced to the Sodom community of Madison County by Sheila Kay Adams. Sheila was a student at Mars Hill College back in 1975 and I had just begun working at the newly established photo archive at the college. I remember speaking with Sheila about the difficulty gaining access to a small mountain community where I could hang out and make pictures. Sheila offered to take me to her home community of Sodom to meet her great aunt, Dellie Chandler Norton. It would prove to be an offer that would irrevocably change my life and influence everything I’ve done since.

Isaac and Robbie Gunter and their son working tobacco, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975.

On our first trip to Sodom together, we passed an older couple and a young man working in a tobacco patch. The older man was plowing the clean and elegant rows with a horse. The other two people were hoeing and pulling the loose, freshly plowed soil around each individual plant. There wasn’t a weed to be seen and the deep green plants were thriving from the personal attention.

Lacking self-confidence and any understanding of local mores, I never would have stopped had I been on my own. But Sheila was the perfect bridge. She knew Isaac and Robbie Gunter and after introducing me and explaining who I was and what I was doing, they readily agreed to pose for photographs. 

Isaac and Robbie Gunter, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975.

Seen from the eyes of a young documentarian thirty-eight years ago  - someone new to the community, coming from a very different place, who didn’t yet know the importance of spending time with people - the photographs felt like wary introductions when I made them. I knew they were nice portraits, but formal and static. They lacked the energy and movement I wanted in my photographs back then and the images never made it beyond the contact sheets.

But a photograph’s meaning can change for all of us over time. Looking at these photographs now with the eyes of someone much older – as old as the Gunters were when I made their pictures - I see something different. I see two people comfortably presenting themselves to the camera in a relaxed and open manner. I see people assured in their posture and confident in who they are. I see the strength and grace in their life-worn faces and hands. And what I once perceived as a formal introduction, I now recognize as a personal invitation into their world.

Robbie's Memorial built by her son Michael, and Isaac and Robbie's Grave and Marker,

Sodom, Madison County, NC, 2013.
 

Tillman Chandler - A Lesson

I took this photograph of Tillman Chandler in 1975 and have never exhibited or published it. There are reasons I’ve kept it hidden away all these years, just as there are reasons now for bringing it to the light.


Tillman Chandler and Junior, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 1975.

I was new to Sodom back then – probably my second or third stay with Dellie and her adopted son Junior - and I was still finding my way in the wider community, something I couldn’t have done without Dellie and her extended family providing access. One day Dellie suggested that Junior take me to meet Tillman who was Dellie’s cousin and a tobacco farmer who lived alone in a cabin on top of the mountain. Tillman’s brother was Dillard Chandler, the noted ballad singer and protagonist of John Cohen’s film The End of An Old Song, but where Dillard was known to be out and about, Tillman rarely left home.

 

 Tillman's Barn and Tobacco, Sodom, 1975. from Sodom Laurel Album

Tillman was there when we arrived, and friendly as I recall, but he wouldn’t let me photograph him. I could photograph around his place, but not him. We stayed an hour or more and I made some pictures of his tobacco and barns. Walking to my car, I turned to thank him and saw this picture.  This was in the days of manual-everything cameras, but I estimated the shutter and aperture settings and pre-focused the lens. I steadied myself, and the camera, and pressed the shutter. I liked the image when I saw it, but felt it lacked energy and it was easy enough to set it aside. But more importantly, there was the matter of my stealing the picture after he had asked me not to and I knew I’d never do anything with it no matter how much I liked it.

I saw Tillman infrequently after that. No one saw him much. He would walk the couple of miles to Rube Gosnell’s store every two or three weeks, pick up some corn meal and feed, a few groceries, some snuff, and walk back to the cabin. A couple of years later folks hanging out at the store realized they hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and decided to go up there. They found him on the floor of the cabin, obviously dead for some time as rats had eaten his body. His bones were still garbed in overalls, shirt, and hat. Reportedly, there were thousands of dollars in cash stuffed into the hat’s brim.

Our young friends Kelsey and Tommy have been looking at a piece of land over in Sodom recently and mentioned there was a small graveyard on the property with someone named Tillman Chandler in it. That prompted me to find the old negative and scan it. From the barn in the background, they confirmed it was the place they were interested in.

For me, Documentary Expression should be a reflection of both the subject and the artist. While I had the image open In Photoshop, I saw a piece of the picture I had never noticed before - Junior’s head in the lower left corner. Those eyes – fixed and riveting – mimicking my own fear and nervousness as I shot the single frame. That simple element – Junior’s eyes – prompted my own memory and brought back the tension and guilt at the moment I made the photograph, and the energy I thought the photograph lacked in the first place.

But what of the ethics of publishing the picture now, years after Tillman’s death? Not only did I take his picture without permission years ago, but now I’m posting it.

 

Kelsey, Tommy, and Maci at Tillman's old cabin, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 2013.

Kelsey, Tommy, and I walked up to the cabin last week. It was different than I remembered it. We hiked up the side of the mountain to the gravesite and found it covered with brush and small saplings. There was an unmarked stone beside Tillman’s marker that Dellie’s granddaughter, Jane Goforth, felt was his mother or father, or both.  We had wondered how they got the bodies to this isolated spot, alone in the woods, a steep climb from the house. From Jane, “Tillman is buried with his mother and Father. There are some other graves. I don't know who they are. It is probably more family members. Tillman is not buried there in his original grave. The weather was so bad that winter they buried him behind the house. They went back the first of April and moved him on up the ridge with his parents. They had to carry him up on a sled.”

I think there is merit in the story, something to be learned that is hard not to share and shouldn’t be ignored. Photography is about memory. It reminds us of people and places from our past, and our present, and helps us understand the particulars of our lives – how we got from there to here. When I look at this photograph of Tillman today, I see an old man holding a cane staring out to an unseen distance. He would be dead less than two years later. There’s a barn, and a dirt road, with a mountain range in the background. It’s serene, and quiet, and I want to believe Tillman, and his family, would think it was a good likeness of him. A likeness worth remembering.

 

Tillman's Grave, Sodom, Madison County, NC, 2013.

Especially with the added words, the photograph paints a picture of place and people. In 1975, there were few remaining people like Tillman Chandler - fiercely independent, raising tobacco for a little cash money, who lived and died by himself on the side of a mountain. I think the photograph and story speak to our shared history of place, as well as, the personal past of the Chandler family, which I hope makes it worth sharing. 

 

Leslie

Leslie Stilwell not long after I met her, Paw Paw, Madison County, NC, 1988.

Leslie - stunning in 1988. Beautiful and resolute today on your 59th Birthday. Marrying you remains the best decision I ever made.

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What's Appropriate - May Not Be for Everyone

The Madison County Stories exhibit was taken down last week at the Madison County Arts Council. I’ve spoken of the exhibit in previous posts so I won’t repeat myself here. But the Project did raise questions that go to the heart of Art and Documentary Expression. As a Visiting Artist with Duke University, my role was twofold – to mentor the young Madison and Duke women in their efforts to document life in Madison County through photography, and to continue my own long-term documentation of evolution and change in the county. 

When hanging the exhibit at Duke University last fall, the question of appropriateness was raised about three of my photographs I wanted to include. The images, two from a Harley motorcycle rally in Hot Springs and one from the Madison County jail in Marshall, showed women, or depictions of women, in stages of undress. I anticipated concerns about these three particular pictures, but in my mind, the photographs were legitimate views of present-day life in Madison County – no less true or believable than my photographs of parties, rodeos, preachers, and farmers that were included in the show.

 

Biker Rally, Madison County, North Carolina, 2012. 

I do think the photographs represent a side of the county that many people wish didn’t exist, and would choose to ignore, hoping it might simply go away. Similarly, the photographs could be interpreted as demeaning toward women, a point difficult to argue against. One person deemed them pornographic. Another was concerned that potential funders of the project would find them distasteful and refuse future support. Others felt the pictures would upset the sensibilities of children and parents whose work was also in the exhibit.

Community values do play a role in an artist’s mind and I did not hang the photographs in either venue. The children, their parents, and the larger community were my primary concerns. Unlike a blog, where someone can choose to read it or not, the exhibit would have offered no opportunity to avoid the pictures. We live in a conservative place, and while most residents are aware of, and indulgent of, alternative behaviors, they don’t want to be reminded or associated with it.  Are the pictures pornographic? I don’t think so. Raw? Yes. Difficult for some people to look at? Yes.

 

Biker Rally, Madison County, North Carolina, 2012.

 

 In the Old Madison County Jail, Marshall North Carolina, 2011. 

Documentary expression – photography, film, sound - is rooted in reality, a representation of the world around us, and oftentimes that reality can be hard to look at. But what is a documentarian's, or artist’s, purpose? Is it to satisfy existing perceptions or offer new ways of seeing? Should it follow the safe and predictable or risk displeasure and controversy? Is it to challenge, or reinforce, the status quo? These are always difficult and palpable questions – made more so when dealing with the lives of real people in one’s home community. Many factors influence the decision to show, or not show, particular images. But if one goal is a truthful and complete portrayal of place, how does one choose to leave some things out?

Hero

John Lee Hooker, Asheville, NC, 1985

John Lee Hooker, b. August 22, 1917, d. June 21, 2001, was born the son of a sharecropper in Coahoma County, Mississippi.  He was an influential American blues musician, singer, and songwriter who developed a unique style of country blues that he called the “talkin’ blues” that was considered his trademark. Two of Hooker’s songs, Boogie Chillen and Boom Boom, are on the list of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 songs that shaped rock and roll with Boogie Chillen being named one of the Songs of the Century. Hooker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is a member of the blues and rock and roll halls of fame.

In 1985, George Bostic and his wife Connie, a noted Asheville artist, operated the Asheville Music Hall on Wall Street in downtown Asheville. It was one of the first music venues to open in the newly renovated city. As the blues scene has picked up in recent weeks in downtown Marshall, I was reminded of this concert years ago by one of the genre's great artists and this photograph I made of him in mid-performance. 

A Day Like Today

 To go outside on a day like today is to know insignificance. 

It has to do with the wind, its domination of the landscape.

Coming down the mountain above my studio,

a steady blow with long gusts and a stinging drizzle.

Trees, big trees, swaying back and forth, back and forth.

It will change to snow tonight, the color of the sky tells it.

 

It’s a cleansing wind.

Finishing off the work of winter,

the hard freezes and leafless limbs.

Out with the old and stale.

New dead limbs in the woods and on the road.

Best carry the chainsaw in the truck for a couple of days.

 

With only a vague promise of bright and fresh.

Peaks of blue in a sky washing gray.

A flush of daffodil blooms last week

brought spring to people’s hearts and minds.

Today they’re beat back.

Limp and broken in the cold and wind.

 

 

Mom and Dad on Their Wedding Day

 February 25, 1945, My parents - Robert Warren Amberg, Catherine Galeano Amberg,

with Anthony Vitto and Mary Mastromarino Galante. 

Today, had they lived, would have been my parent’s 68th wedding anniversary. As it was, my father died in February 2002 as they were approaching their 57th anniversary and my mother passed away in 2008.

My parents married in a bit of a rush. Mom had been dating Ralph for a couple of years – a career Army officer – and my father was Ralph’s best friend. When Ralph broke off the relationship, my father stepped into the void and he and my mother were married within two weeks of their first date. Part of the rush had to do with World War II, which was coming to a conclusion in Europe, and after a couple of weeks of marital bliss Dad was shipped off to Italy where he stayed until the end of the war.

But part of the rush to marriage also had to do with my mother’s sense of rebellion. She was a first generation American of Italian and Sicilian ancestry who was clearly ready to move away from that old world way of living. My grandparents, however, were not quite ready to let go of her or their traditions and my grandfather, especially, was so displeased with the marriage that he didn’t attend the wedding. It wasn’t just that my father wasn’t Italian, let alone not Sicilian, but nobody knew anything about him, his family, or his prospects. My mother’s two young Italian cousins –whose families were also from Gioia de Colle in Puglia, Italy - stood with them at the wedding as symbols of friendship and love, but also as kind of sanctioning agents who recognized and accepted that the old world was changing. The marriage was a leap of faith for my father as well. He was a mid-westerner, a meat and potatoes guy, a quiet man steeped in good manners and efficient organization, who was marrying into a large, loud, and emotional Italian family that loved to gamble, drink, eat, and party. 

 Mom and Dad, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1978. 

By 1978, at the time of the bottom picture, my parents had four children, one grandchild, a house in the suburbs of Washington, DC, and thirty-three years of marriage behind them. By that time, as is the case with most relationships, the romance and the rebellion had worn off and they were faced with not only the good things they had built together, but also their differences in temperament, belief, and culture. My father had taken early retirement from his government job and was ready to move to Florida where they had bought a lot in a subdivision. But as time went on, it became increasingly clear that my mother would never leave her family or the place she had always known as home.

They stayed together until the end and I, for one, often wondered why. But my parents were of the generation that stayed together and honored their commitments, no matter the differences that arose later in life. It’s a lesson many of us could well learn from.

I've Got The Zuma Blues

Imagine my surprise at walking into Zuma, our local coffee shop in downtown Marshall, and finding a middle-aged black guy playing electric guitar and singing Chicago Blues. But there he was, Al “Coffee” McDaniel, and not only was he singing and playing the Blues, but he was doing it really, really well. The man has got the gift.

This latest addition to the Madison County music scene is to be a regular Monday night affair at Zuma and yet another feather in owner Joel Friedman’s cap. Friedman has been hosting the very popular Thursday night Bluegrass jam with the legendary fiddler, Bobby Hicks, for the last few years, but Blues Jam represents a significant departure from Madison County’s musical norm.

 

As most of us who live here, and many people who don’t, understand, Madison County is steeped in musical tradition – balladry, old-time, country, and bluegrass – and is considered a “source” community by music scholars for those genres. Recently though, with the arrival of hundreds of new people to the community including numerous first class musicians from other musical genres, our melodious parameters have been expanding. One of those musicians is the noted, and widely respected jazz keyboardist Steve Davidowski who is the mover and shaker behind the Monday Blues Jam. Davidowski is known in music circles as an early member of the Dixie Dregs, a jazz, southern rock, bluegrass, and classical fusion band based in Athens, Georgia. Since moving to Marshall, he has graced the town with his impromptu piano playing, walks around town with piccolo in hand, and his wonderful yearly benefit concerts for Neighbors in Need. This past Monday, in addition to McDaniel, he was joined by John Herman on bass, James Wilson on drums, and John Hupertz on harmonica. Local singing sensation, Ashley Heath, also sat in and did a full throttle version of Stormy Monday. With this new sound in town, Marshall residents can be assured that Mondays will not be stormy, and Tuesdays won’t be bad either.

Top, Blues Jam at Zuma Coffee with, from left James Wilson, John Herman, Steve Davidowski, and Al McDaniel.

Middle, Ashley Heath singing Stormy Monday with McDaniel, Steve Davidowski on sax, John Hupertz on harp.

Bottom, James Wilson on drums, John Herman on bass.

Peacham

 

I arrived at my shoot the day before the assignment. I was in Marshfield, Vermont, close to St. Johnsbury in the Northeast Kingdom, and not far from the Canadian border. It was cold for the middle of October, even up there, and spitting snow. After settling into my motel, I drove to the town of Peacham, a place I had visited fifteen years earlier, looking for Vermont cheddar and maple syrup. In a store I noticed a poster announcing a town hall meeting that night with Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s Independent US Senator.

I follow politics pretty closely and I’ve concluded, like a lot of people it seems, that Congress is malfunctioning, not representing the people its supposed to serve, and only a pawn of big business. That said, I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders and thought this would be my only opportunity to hear him speak in person. So, I went to the meeting and wasn’t disappointed.

Sanders describes himself as a Democratic Socialist, a label that scares many people. But in reality, what that label means is he is more interested in the lives of his constituents, the common people, than he is in big business or moneyed interests. He consistently votes for environmental protection, workers rights, universal health care, and media reform. One of my favorite things about him is he was a carpenter for a time before he got into politics. He was also the President of the University of Vermont.

At the town hall meeting, Sanders had chosen to spend his campaign dollars on food and provided a great, homey meal for everyone that showed up. While standing in line for grub, I met two women who both had sons that graduated from Warren Wilson College. For me, that was a sign I had come to the right place. The food was great and Senator Sander’s talk was the populist diatribe I was hoping for. I brought a yard sign home to the farm, knowing full well I couldn't vote for him, but hoping it would be a reminder of values I believe in.

Portrait of Liz Franklin

I made this photograph in 1975, less than two years after my arrival in Madison County. I had gone with Dellie, and her sister Berzilla, to visit an old friend of Berzilla’s named Ernie Franklin who lived in the small community of Chapel Hill in the county. She knew him from the older days, when her husband Lee was alive and they would regularly make music in the community. Ernie played fiddle and banjo and also made instruments and tools. She didn’t know where he lived exactly, but they figured we’d find him.

After some asking around and missed turns, we turning onto a dirt track, passed a broad empty pasture, and into a hollar with nice southern exposure. Soon, we came to a small cluster of buildings – a house with a thin smoke coming from a stone chimney, the remains of the old house with wood shingles, now used for storage, and I think a small barn. 

 

A small, wiry man came out of the house. Ernie Franklin. After he and Berzilla got re-acquainted, he invited us in to meet his mother who also lived there. With winter approaching, Liz Franklin was soon going to live with her daughter in Asheville, and once inside the house, you realized how tough it would be for an older, frail, person. There was no indoor plumbing. An outhouse. Heat came from a fireplace and coal stove set in the middle of a small room. No electricity – light came from oil lamps.  This was how she was raised and lived most of her life, and you could sense she didn't want to leave. Years of hard work showed in her face and hands, but she clearly wouldn’t last through a hard season.

I haven’t shown or exhibited this photograph very much over the years. Initially, I loved it. It seemed to embody a romantic notion of place and people for me - tough, resilient, wizened, looking to the light, and seeing a past. But with more time in the community, I began to understand those heroic characteristics were largely coming from me and less so the people themselves. People like Dellie, who had lived hard lives, knew there was little of the romantic about it. So, I put the photograph away and published another from the same visit in my book.

 

But I’ve re-visited the first photograph in recent months, initially as part of digitizing my negative files, and then because I realized I still love the portrait. Thirty-eight years after the image was made, I can look at her face and see an idealized, noble rendering that fits neatly into a specific stereotype of place. But now, I can also see that her look is true.