Roger May: Laid Bare

EDITOR's NOTE:  Photo and text copyright photographer Roger May for his current project, "Laid Bare," used by permission.  All rights reserved to the author.

Last night Roger posted on Facebook this photo and interview with the woman portrayed.  When I saw it this morning,  I found it eloquent and heart breaking: the last of the subject's  words evoke the Old Testament of Job-ian dimensions, the first echoes Esau being conned by Jacob: “I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?" 

With Roger's permission I've combined part of his explanation of the project from his website with post from last night.  If you’ve been "impacted by mountaintop removal mining or worked in the fight to end it," he'd love hear your story and photograph you (nude) in your ravaged landscape.  And, by the way, before he asked ask anyone else to pose nude for him, he went first in this short video.)

*

My point of entry as a photographer was an attempt to photograph the large-scale destruction of mountaintop removal mining in the coalfields of Central Appalachia. Overwhelmed and frustrated by the magnitude of what I was up against, the enormity of strip mining and the perceived threat of anyone speaking out against it, I stopped trying to make those pictures and moved on, but the issue was something I’ve never been able to move on from.

Now, I’m returning to the visual conversation of mountaintop removal mining with the series I’m tentatively calling Laid Bare, which introduces the nude form into the decimated landscapes left behind from this kind of mining. Framing form and land together to explore loss and vulnerability, I hope to collaborate in creating moments of beauty in the midst of vast destruction as a form of protest.

*

This past Saturday, in Mingo County, West Virginia...[a woman] told me part of her story. I trust you'll find it as powerful as I do.

The lawyer for Hobet Mine Company called me to say that, by the time the home place was divided amongst all the living heirs, there’d barely be enough land for each of us to have space for our own graves. I was a newly-separated mother of three living far away in Texas, trying to scrape up enough money for daycare and my kids’ school lunches. I sold my share to Hobet for $178.

Twelve of my childhood summers unfolded in that holler, in the house of my dead daddy’s parents—the closest thing to home I knew. The last time I’d been there before the lawyer called, both my granny, grandpa and great-granny were already dead, and kudzu was snaking up the outside walls of their houses, threatening attic windows. That day, as I drove out of there, carrying photographs, old land deeds and one of my grandpa’s mine pay envelopes with a forgotten dime pressed into its corner, a gigantic construction crane loomed over the mountain like a creature in a Japanese sci-fi film.

That was twenty-odd years ago.

Now, on the King Coal Highway, time has been carved away from these mountains until there is too much space, too much sky. I find myself in another country, thinking that we are not meant to be navigating these mountaintops so effortlessly. We were never meant to be up here at all, so near the sun in restless, rarified air that has become a constant wind. It’s as if the churned up ground has surrendered it stories into an eternal sigh that worries the leaves of trees we cannot name.

Let me lie down in these trembling grasses. Let the scouring wind find my skin. I will let the harsh sun burn me. I will listen for the pulse in the wound and answer it with my own.

Photographer Roger May: Broadening the View of Appalachia

Map from Appalachian Regional Commission via Roger May.

Roger May's new collaboration with other photographers and writers Looking at Appalachia: 50 Years After the War on Poverty.  His definition for the project is the area funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission.  I might quibble with that, as it leaves out Roanoke and includes some areas that aren't exactly in our mountains and valleys.  As Rudy Abramson and my friend Jean Haskell write in their introduction to , the Encyclopedia of Appalachia,

At the beginning, as ever since, the federal map reflected the exigencies of congressional politics as much as economic need, geography, or culture. Many inhabitants of Pennsylvania and New York were surprised to learn that the government in Washington considered them Appalachians, and some were opposed to the very idea. Newly elected New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who had taken up a deep interest in the region during his brother’s 1960 presidential campaign, led the effort to make the southern tier counties of his adopted state part of the federal region. Similarly, Mississippi was included largely due to the influence of Representative Jamie Whitten, a powerful member of the House Appropriations Committee. On the other hand, a number of Virginia mountain counties that were Appalachian by any standard except political were left out because their representative, Richard H. Poff, was opposed to the 1965 bill.

But maybe Roger's geographical definition makes sense in that his reference point is the War on Poverty.  He writes in the overview,

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared unconditional war on poverty in the United States and nowhere was this war more photographed than Appalachia. A quick Google image search of “war on poverty” will yield several photographs of President Johnson on the porch of the Fletcher family home in Inez, Kentucky. Many of the War on Poverty photographs, whether intentional or not, became a visual definition of Appalachia. These images have often drawn from the poorest areas and people to gain support for the intended cause, but unjustly came to represent the entirety of the region while simultaneously perpetuating stereotypes. In an attempt to explore the diversity of Appalachia and establish a visual counter point, this project will look at Appalachia fifty years after the declaration of the War on Poverty. Drawing from a diverse population of photographers [and now writers] within the region, this new crowdsourced image archive will serve as a reference that is defined by its people as opposed to political legislation. 

Then again, "as defined by its people" is hardly as defined by ARC funding.

I'm happy to report that Roger has now added a written component:  Notes on Appalachia, to include us writers of prose and poetry, as well as storytellers.

...[W]e’re looking for your notes, thoughts, stories, hopes, dreams, interviews, and more about your section of Appalachia. Due to the incredible generosity of the folks at Field Notes, we have 13 sets of their “County Fair” edition notebooks that we’re itching to get into your hands! Your narratives will provide a rich context to the visual representations of Appalachia that have been submitted to the project. Here's the scoop – one notebook will be mailed to a point of contact in each of the project’s 13 states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. From there, that person will initiate sharing the memo book throughout the counties in their respective state. When it’s full, the memo books will be returned to Roger May...and new ones will be dispatched....The memo books will be scanned and shared on the project site... and will possibly be included in a print exhibition of the project photographs beginning next year. 

And for my fellow Virginians, here are the photograph from our state as of this evening:

Lauren Pound (of Athens, Ohio) Richlands, Tazewell County
Chris Jackson (of the Eastern Panhandle of WV), Covington, Alleghany County
Joseph Oliver Shay (location not listed) Buena Vista and Glasgow, Rockbridge County
Katie Currid (Staunton, VA) McDowell, Highland County
Jeremy M. Lange (Durham, NC) Patrick County
Pat Jarrett  (Shenandoah Valley of VA)  Lexington, Virginia

I know I'll be writing my state contact (Salvador Barajas) and I hope you will, too.  Here's the list of state contacts (or if one is not listed, consider filling the position.  If you have questions write Roger.  His email is also at that link.