Rejoice and raise hell.

#015

Welch, McDowell County, West Virginia, June 2019.

I’ve been revisiting a lot of my past work lately - both photographs and writing. Despite having several irons in the proverbial fire, I’m feeling a bit stuck creatively. Often, I look at the work of others for inspiration, but I’ve really been trying to spend time with what I’ve made in the hope of it informing me on what I want to make next.

I had a great (virtual) conversation with Andy Adams earlier this week. In all of our years following each other’s work, we’d never actually met. We talked about work ethic, what place means to us, photobooks, and feeling stuck. I’m grateful for the community Andy’s work has developed and connected and for the thoughtful conversation.

Yesterday, I pulled Amanda Greene’s Rejoice from my shelves and spent some time with it. Published in 2019 by Aint-Bad, it’s Greene’s first monograph. I learned of her work through the Seeing Appalachia (formerly Looking at Appalachia) project, where she skillfully and intimately photographed her home state of Georgia. When she began working on Rejoice, she reached out and asked if I’d consider writing the introduction, to which I most assuredly said yes to.

Here’s the full introduction to Rejoice:

I enjoy spending time with the work of photographers who love on where they’re from through the way they photograph a place. I don’t mean a dressed up, Sunday-best version, but what my grandmother said was a “warts and all” kind of love, the notion that you love someone - or someplace - for the good and bad, through it all. The kind of love that moves people and brings them back, that can ground a heart to a geographic point, and sometimes break it.

There are many ways in which I identify with the work of Amanda Greene. I, too, left the hills when I was young and years later found myself in California ultimately to return home. I always sensed that I could live anywhere, but that I could only be at home in a particular place, a specific place. I liken it to the difference between being lonely and being alone; they mean vastly different things, yet are often confused as being interchangeable.

Many of the pictures on these pages are unpeopled, but are structured with a keen sophistication that suggests proximity to lives lived and the spaces in between coming and going: country grocery stores I’ve never been in, but swear I can tell you what it feels like to stand in the canned goods aisle looking for baked beans; early winter sunset reflected in a bedroom window and I can tell you how the air smells and how the bare branch feels in hand; and the sounds of a passing truck and distant dogs barking as I read a sign that reminds me that Jesus can help.

There are signs and waypoints that speak to us throughout our lives. Sometimes they whisper when we’re young. Sometimes they speak firmly with raspy voice that we cannot forget even when we try. Sometimes they call us away and sometimes they call us home. When Greene answered her call home, she did so with a sense of wonder for where she’s from, rediscovered with a fervor displayed in her diligence to document.

When I sit with this work laid out before me, I consider not what has been lost, but rather what might have been lost. I see plastic funeral flowers - a reminder of a promise made as a child to her mother that she’d never use plastic flowers on her grave, but rather plant pansies. We are invited into corners of the rural South that are often overly romanticized and instead shown them just as they are. It comes as no surprise that there is no shortage of photobooks about the American South and seemingly everyone thinks to know it in some form or another. But to truly know a place, you have to spend time there, you have to love it warts and all.

I sense from these pictures an endless curiosity about people and place, about signs and wonders, and yet incredible attention to the details of impermanence. We are offered vignettes into spaces most folks drive or walk by daily and never notice or at least don’t notice in a manner that might lead one to make a picture of. We are invited into the intimate spaces of church basements, of side yards, of all four seasons, of faith, and of community.

Perhaps folks in larger cities will never see a table full of tomatoes with a sign notifying them that purchases are made on an honor system and to “put money in jar,” but I am grateful to have grown up in a place where this was more common than not. Perhaps folks from small towns who have moved to larger cities will be comforted by these reminders. Pictures like this make me thankful for being from a hard to find place on a map. They make me rejoice in simplicity and familiarity.

In Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry writes:

“You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.” (Berry 126)

This body of work is an occasion to rejoice. There is much to notice, to not just look at, but to see, and then return to. And it is in the returning that home is found again and again.

I highly recommend Greene’s book. You can support her work here and follow her on Instagram here. Also, look at those quilts!

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Speaking of older work, I saw a Facebook post this morning by Charlie Sassara, pictured with three other folks who had climbed Denali in winter (there are only 17 total). The first article I ever published - years before I picked up photography - was about the first winter ascent of Denali’s West Rib. It appeared in the September 15, 2002 issue of Climbing. I will always remember the kindness and grace of Alison Osius who patiently worked with me to edit the piece.

A year later, I published a short piece in Alpinist (Issue 4, Autumn 2003), where I reminisced about my years spent climbing in California’s high desert and Alaska’s endless array of big, cold mountains only to find myself stuck at a desk in a day job in North Carolina’s Piedmont region. Time really does fly.

Reading through these older pieces of writing and looking at pictures I’ve made remind me of how grateful I am to all the folks who have helped me over the years, people who encouraged me and believed in me when I most certainly did not believe in myself. Here’s your reminder to surround yourself with people who encourage you, who don’t just tell you want you want to hear, but help show you what is possible.

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We planted a garden this week! Last year, we managed to keep deer and other critters out of our garden with an electric fence. This year, we nearly doubled the size of the garden and hope we’ll be equally successful with keeping things out and growing things within. I’ll keep you updated.

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I’m still reading Home Economics by Wendell Berry.
I’m listening to The Local Honeys.
I watched and highly recommend The Biggest Little Farm.

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Raise hell, eat cornbread.

Roger