Documentary Photography Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Looking At Abandoned Buildings As Art

Nashville, Tennessee-based photographer Jay Farrell looks at abandoned structures and rusted out cars differently than the rest of us. Where we might blight or garbage, he finds beauty.

Farrell has published a series of 12 photobooks of abandoned and forgotten places. His most recent book is called Abandoned Eastern Kentucky.

Reporter Eric Douglas spoke with Farrell to find out more about the book, his process, and what impressions he hopes to leave on readers/viewers.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Douglas: The book we’re talking about is Abandoned Eastern Kentucky. You go out into the hinterlands, down back-country roads, and discover old abandoned buildings and cars. What prompted you to start this project?

Farrell: Well, it started off probably 15 years ago, or even a little bit longer. I started bringing models to some of the old abandoned factories in Nashville, because it was an interesting canvas. It got to where I started enjoying photographing the buildings more than the people because there’s no scheduling, there’s no drama,

Douglas: When you’re going out on these hunting trips, you’re flying blind. You’re just going off the beaten path.

Farrell: For the most part, it’s just like “this road looks promising.” I’m trying to remember in that book if I had any firsthand knowledge of anything before I visited it, and I don’t think so actually. On my last adventure, in Harlan County, a friend told me about Lynch and the company store. Other than that, it was all flying blind.

Douglas: What do you prefer to find? The architectural buildings? Or the houses or the cars? What are you looking for?

Farrell: I like all of it. Yesterday I went out about an hour east of Nashville. I don’t really have preconceived notions, like, “I’m gonna find this, I’m gonna find that.” Some days, you might not find anything. It’s just an exploration. And that’s okay, too.

Obviously, I like the industrial grip of the factories and whatnot. But sometimes a farmhouse that has stuff left behind is interesting. It’s a totally different feel from one to the other, and the roadside finds with the cars. Early in my publishing days, I never really did much history research. And now I find that it makes the whole experience three dimensional, not only for me, but for the readers as well. These aren’t history books, but it’s kind of fun to dig into it and find out something about the area.

Douglas: At the start of every chapter, you have a short essay about your, your discoveries or remembrances from each day.

Farrell: I tried to make the essays take up no more than a page, but I do want to include some of the story.

Douglas: I was struck that there aren’t any people in your book at all? Is that completely intentional, or is that just kind of the way things work out?

Farrell: It’s really about the abandoned and forgotten, and it wouldn’t have that life-after-people feel if there were people in it.

Douglas: It almost has a post-apocalyptic feeling to it.

Farrell: I’ve thought that for a long time. I think that’s my biggest inspiration, just remnants of the past and also the texture and patina of the building. And that’s something that only can be created with time. You can’t go to Home Depot and buy that.

Douglas: I’m sure part of your credo is to “leave only footprints and take only photographs.”

Farrell: That’s the reason why I keep the locations secret. Unless it’s somebody that already knows that I will share a location with them, there’s no need for them to ask. I have to trust that they’re a responsible explorer as well.

Douglas: Some people would refer to this as poverty porn. You’re photographing poverty to take back to the city and say “look at how these people live.”

Farrell: I would hate for somebody to think that. If it was right next to me, I would photograph it just as easily. I have done Memphis and photographed stuff in Philadelphia, even right here in Nashville where I live. The landscape of Eastern Kentucky added a cherry on the sundae for sure. And I’m hoping the book made that clear.

Douglas: It is certainly a defined region. You can say Eastern Kentucky and people know exactly what you’re talking about.

Farrell: Someone might have some misconceptions. But the people I met were extremely nice. None of them had that thought about what I was doing. I think they’re leery about production crews because they’ve painted them in an unflattering light and then left. But, I find that if you’re curious about the area, they’re happy to tell you. Obviously if you go there with the wrong approach, you could end up in some trouble, too.

The book is available through Arcadia Publishing.

This story is part of a series of interviews with authors from, or writing about, Appalachia.

You Can Help Paint a New Picture of Appalachia

Fifty years ago President Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty, and photographs taken at the time continued to define what Appalachia looks like for decades afterwards. Now one Appalachian photographer is working to modernize this vision of the region.

Roger May started a new project called Looking at Appalachia: 50 Years After the War on Poverty and He’s asking photographers from across the region to submit photos.

“I thought a really good way to celebrate the 50th anniversary would be to crowd source a project whereby photographers working in these 13 Appalachian states could photograph what they know as Appalachia and use these photographs as sort of a visual archive,” May said.

May believes many people from outside Appalachia, and even those from the region, continue to define it through the photographs showing abject poverty that were taken 50 years ago.

“It was a very limited view of a very limited swath of Appalachia.”

March 8, 2014. Rachel Hartzler, 7, takes a minute in between sessions of playing tag behind the Sugar Tree Country Store during the Highland Maple Festival in McDowell, Highland County, Virginia. The families of the children were at the country store to sell maple ice cream and maple chicken as a part of the festival. Hartzler and her sister, who are Mennonite, say they have never cut their hair.

May doesn’t want to limit the input for this project so he decided to open it up to anyone willing to visually document the region. And he doesn’t necessarily want to intentionally avoid poverty and stereotypes.

“We have to be inclusive and to deny that those things exist doesn’t do anyone any good. We have to see that poverty does exist but there’s so much more to Appalachia than those poverty pictures from 50 years ago.”

May hopes the project will stimulate conversation among many, including photographers, scholars, sociologists and folklorists.

“And that is to sort of pull back and think about what it is to be from Appalachia. Visually has it changed, how has it changed?”

February 22, 2014. Brandon Kline, of St. Albans, West Virginia, rides his bicycle across the Antietam Iron Works Bridge. Spanning Antietam Creek south of Sharpsburg, Maryland, in Washington County, the bridge was built in 1832.

May will curate the collection online and hopes to feature some of the best photos in an exhibit eventually that can travel across the region.

The guidelines for submitting photos are:

All work submitted must be the copyright of the photographer
Photographs must be made in calendar year 2014.
Photographs must be made in one of the 13 state’s counties the Appalachian Regional Commission defines as Appalachia.
Submissions are open through 31 December 2014.

May also says the submissions must:

As much information as possible about each photograph, but at minimum the date, city, county, and state
Be in .JPG format, sized at 1500 pixels wide, 72ppi.
File names must include your last name and the city and state where the photograph was made (example: maychattaorywv2.jpg)
He would also like submissions to include a link to photographers’ websites

Documentary Photographer 'Testifies' on Upbringing in Southern W.Va.

Photographs depicting life in West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia have long been the subject of controversy. One documentary photographer with roots in the state’s southern coal fields is seeking to change that through his work but also has motives far more personal.

“The pictures have this visual context of Appalachia, or at least the mountains. Even if you don’t even know what Appalachia is, you can see this rural, country, mountain way of life,” said documentary photographer Roger May as he spoke about his project Testify.

He affectionately refers to the project as a “visual love letter to Appalachia.”

“What you can’t see but you need some sort of back story is my looking for something to sort of hold onto from my childhood and something to sort of carry with me and identify these things that are often not exactly how we remember them,” he said.

Born across the river in Pike County, Kentucky and raised in Chattaroy in Mingo County, May has lived in Raleigh, North Carolina since the late ‘80s. He recalled his formative years in the southern West Virginia coal fields and his mother’s reasons for relocating the family to North Carolina.

“I was becoming more aware that we were poor and we were on welfare. And my mom, as a single mom of two boys, she didn’t want our only option to be to work in the coal mines. She felt like if we stayed, and if I stayed through high school, that’s pretty much what was going to happen,” said May.

Although he’s returned to the area often to visit family, just over six years ago May began what he calls “making photographs” of the people and the area he still calls home.

“I try to be very deliberate when I say ‘I’m making pictures’ or ‘making photographs’ rather than ‘taking’ because, that one letter, so much hinges on that. These people have been taken—they’ve had enough taken from them already—I don’t want to be another taker in a long line of takers,” he said.

Initially compiling a body of work that protested mountaintop mining, May’s focus eventually turned into a reflection on his childhood and upbringing in the Tug Fork Valley.

The photographs from Testify document the spectrum of scenery in the state’s southern coalfields, from landscapes of the mountains to mining facilities—even the people May calls his own.

At its core, Testify, serves to champion the place where May is from, but also attempts to reconcile his memories of growing up with the reality of life in the area.

“This project has just been a creative process to kind of work that out. I say ‘memory versus reality’ and memory is a real thing and reality is a real thing. Those don’t always line up. Somewhere in the middle is probably a more accurate reflection of what actually happened,” he said.

May’s limited edition collection of photos will be published by Horse & Buggy Press. It is scheduled for release in September and was entirely funded by a Kickstarter campaign he launched earlier this year.