ABOUT THE APPALACHIA EXHIBIT
Current Showing:Center for Photography Graduate School of Journalism University of California Berkeley August 2 - October 11, 2010 Previous Showings: Ekstrom Library University of Louisville (Louisville, KY) August 2008 - July 2009 Exhibition Poster Appalshop (Whitesburg, KY) March 13 - April 13, 2008 Godbey Appalachian Center Gallery Southeast Kentucky Community & Technical College (Cumberland, KY) October 29 - December 30, 2007 Exhibition Poster Tuska Center for Contemporary Art University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY) September 21 - October 12, 2007 Exhibition Poster Return to Whitesburg, March 2008 About the Work The Appalachian Portfolio, 1959-1963, was inspired by his wife, Mary Lou Wyatt Stern, who came from Appalachia coal country. Subsequently, a story in The New York Times prompted Stern to travel to Whitesburg and Harlan County, Kentucky. Over a four-year period, he generated over 900 images. The photographs were widely displayed, including at a Senate hearing on President Johnson's War on Poverty Program. Later, Stern produced a PBS documentary using the images and sound interviews. The broadcast was nominated for an Emmy. According to Kate Black, University of Kentucky Archivist: Stern's photographs are socially concerned but they do not reflect common stereotypes of mid twentieth century rural poverty, nor do they depict residents of Appalachia as the "exotic other." Stern's eastern Kentuckians are neither relics of the past nor depraved aberrations. His body of Appalachian work does not contain a single photograph of a soiled child pressed against a dirty window peering forlornly out to a world she can't dream of inhabiting. Instead, it includes a portrait of a girl outside her bare-bones home finger-painting on a warm spring day as her dogs relax nearby. The facts of her material existence are not hidden but neither is the presence of her creative spirit.Stern used a Nikon F1, a Rolleiflex, plus X and Tri X film. The negatives were scanned with an Imacon Photo Scanner, carbon ink prints were made on an Epson 3800 with archival Innova Fiba-print Gloss paper. The Appalachian Portfolio has been included in international publications and has been exhibited at the University of Kentucky at Lexington, the University of Louisville, Godbey Gallery in Cumberland, KY, the Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY, and Dartmouth College, NH. This is the first West Coast exhibition. Photography Exhibit Documenting Kentucky Mining Towns Shown For First Time In Kentucky (LEXINGTON) – The University of Kentucky Libraries and the Tuska Center for Contemporary Art announce the opening of Appalachian Portfolio, 1959-1963: Photographs by Andrew Stern, with a companion exhibit of photographs of coal camp life taken by Russell Lee immediately after World War II. Stern's photographs document the social and physical landscapes of various eastern Kentucky mining communities during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Appalachian Portfolio was shot primarily in Letcher, Harlan, and Perry counties over a four year period prior to President Johnson's War on Poverty (1964). Taken before the onslaught of journalists and image makers descended on Appalachia, "Stern's photographs capture the last moments before an iconic Appalachia became forever emblazoned on the American cultural consciousness," says Kate Black, UK Libraries. "While Andrew Stern's Appalachian photographs are firmly rooted in the documentary tradition, his work avoids many of the pitfalls of those who unintentionally marginalized the people whose story they came to tell," says Janie Welker, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions for the University of Kentucky Art Museum. "He doesn't disguise the poverty found in the region, but also sees the humanity of these small communities in their gathering places, in the faces of hard-working adults, and in the spirit of children at school and at play." Stern's documentary What Price Poverty?, which he produced for PBS in 1964 and which was later nominated for an Emmy, features some of the photographs that will be exhibited. This documentary will be shown during the exhibit. Appalachian Portfolio was co-curated by Kate Black and Janie Welker. The opening reception will be held on Friday, September 21, 2007 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the Tuska Center for Contemporary Art, located on Rose Street near the Singletary Center and the corner of Rose Street and Rose Lane. The exhibit will run from September 21 - October 12. On the Eve of the War on Poverty, a conversation about photography, social concern, and eastern Kentucky will be held on Monday, September 24, 12:00-1:30 p.m. in the Tuska Gallery followed by a reception. Participants will be: photographer Andrew Stern; writer and English professor Gurney Norman, who was a journalist in eastern Kentucky in the 1960s; Art Museum Curator Janie Welker whose specialty is photography; and sociologist Maureen Mullinax whose research focuses on community based arts. The discussion will be moderated by Richard Angelo, a professor in the College of Education who studies multiple meanings and interpretations of historical documents, such as photographs. This is a collaborative effort of the University of Kentucky Libraries, Art Museum, Appalachian Studies Program, and Appalachian Center with the Tuska Gallery. These events are free and open to the public. For further press inquiries or additional information, please contact Kate Black, Special Collections Librarian, University of Kentucky Libraries, 859-257-4207, kate.black@uky.edu. About the artists: Andrew Stern, born in Munich, Germany in 1931, began his career in still photography in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He later became a broadcast journalist and documentary producer for ABC News and PBS. He taught at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley for 25 years, where he inaugurated the broadcast journalism and photography programs. Russell Lee (1903-1986) is best known for the iconic images of the Great Depression he made for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The fourteen photographs in the companion exhibition are part of a federal survey of health conditions in the bituminous coal fields. As the project's photographer, Lee created an extensive record of coal camp life between 1945 and 1946. |