Shelby Lee Adams

    


I found the work of Shelby Lee Adams to be absolutely fascinating and very inspiring. I was not very familiar with portrait photography or very interested in it until I saw Adams’ portraits of the Appalachians. After watching the documentary about his time photographing Appalachian family life since the mid-1970s, I learned that this specific body of work has sparked a lot of controversy. Many people think that his images exploit poor Appalachian families and enforce negative stereotypes about their culture.

This is because many of his photographs show the Appalachians in impoverished surroundings, with somber, unsmiling facial expressions, and at times with missing teeth, dirt on their faces, and “hilly-billy” like clothes. One specific photograph subject to debate is of a girl with a somewhat saddened expression, who is peeking her head through the hole of a broken fence. The aunt of the girl was angry because she thought that the photograph made it seem like the girl was very sad and poor and conveyed an inaccurate portrayal of her life. But Adams didn’t ask the girl to poke her head through the fence to draw attention to it, she did it on her own.

                  I don’t think that the work of Adams is contentious or provocative in any way, but rather very admirable and inspiring. Adams was born in Kentucky, is very familiar with and partial to the Appalachian culture, and is most often friends with his subjects. Because he is friends with his subjects, they feel very comfortable and are able to be themselves when they are being photographed, so he is able to capture very beautiful, intricate, and authentic facial expressions. Richard Avedon said that he considers the human face the most interesting thing to photograph in the world, and I didn’t really realize this until I saw his and Adam’s incredible portraits.

In his artist statement and in the documentary, he explains that he absolutely loves and respects the mountain people, and that his intentions are very genuine, which are to hopefully communicate the endearing strength, resourcefulness, gratefulness, and dignity of the Appalachians. He also always gets his subjects approval before he shows his images to the public, which I think is the only real criteria necessary for approving a photograph. Some people argue that the Appalachians don’t have the intellectual capacity to understand that they are being exploited, but I think that that is very presuming and judgmental. His subjects appreciate his work and believe that his photographs are original and true depictions of their lives.

His portraits of the mountain people are all black and white film, and are all extremely effective and interesting to me. I find myself wanting to know the life story of all of his subjects because he makes the lives and personalities of them so intriguing. He uses light and composition very effectively, and the balance between black and white is always spot on. He also uses very interesting props with his subject matter that helps to convey their unique culture. I think that the work of Adams opens viewers’ eyes to a unique and endearing culture of people that many people don’t even know exists. It inspires people to widen their horizons and consider the lives of people in states of poverty, oppression, and trauma, which many people try to neglect because it causes feelings of guilt and sadness, but I think it can inspire people to be grateful and more open-minded to different types of people in the world.