Showings:

Appalshop
Whitesburg KY
Early 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
September 21 - October 12, 2007
Exhibition Poster

Return to Whitesburg, March 2008

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.