30 Years in Appalachia: Moving Beyond the Hillbilly Clichés
But of course, despite the fact that Jeffrey Ladd stated that stereotypes and poverty play only a minor role in van Manen's book, the Time editors (or Ladd himself?) selected the most unflattering stereotype of a photo they could find to accompany his review. Typical, isn't it?
TIME
Out There
Monday, June 23, 2014
By Jeffrey Ladd
30 Years in Appalachia: Moving Beyond the Hillbilly Clichés
Photography and cinema have not always treated the communities in American Appalachia kindly. Even when approached with the best intentions, the portrayal of Appalachia is often dominated by the region’s poverty and at worst, has centered mainly on the exaggerations of inbreeding, religious practices like snake handling, or other sensational subjects rife with assumptions and easy categorization. No need to try to understand these communities as human beings with hopes and dreams and frustrations like others – in the shorthand language of pictures they are often simplified into shotgun-toting, ‘hillbillies’. The exception is what I find in Bertien van Manen’s newest book Moonshine from MACK.
Van Manen was raised in a mining area in the south of the Netherlands and has had a long fascination with miners and mining communities. When in 1985, a professor in Leeds, UK told van Manen about women working in mines in Appalachia, she traveled to the US to photograph them, with the help of woman named Betty Jean Hall, who was working as a lawyer to several Appalachian families.
Known as communities that, understandably enough, are suspicious of outsiders, van Manen worked hard to establish a sense of trust. She stayed for months at a time, living with families and shooting with small cameras. “Sometimes I just went up a holler without knowing anyone, with a pounding heart; it always went well. After suspicion and holding back, people appeared to be intrigued and became hospitable. I always stayed with them in their trailer or house, never in a hotel. Living their life and not using large cameras, I was not considered as threatening. After a while, people liked their pictures to be taken.”
Although the region’s poverty can certainly be felt in van Manen’s photographs, it plays a very minor role. Instead we trespass on moments of intimacy and beauty unmarred by artistic pretension. In one, five men stand in conversation over beers but each displaying their own unique body language; in another a young woman combs the hair of an older – the curves of hair mimic the falls of the younger woman’s dress; in others, children seem to be defying gravity with their handstands and play flips....
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