Outsiders have long fictionalized the narrative surrounding Appalachia. As a resident of West Virginia I have always been aware of the views others hold of my home, and they have guided me to create my own version of life in the hills. My Appalachia is a granulated depiction based on the false impressions of others, my idealizations and personal experiences.
Light plays an important role in how I understand this place. The warm southern sun creates a glow that pours over the mountains, rivers and forests creating long shadows, dark recesses and gray mists that blanket the landscape. This unique quality of light is inherent to the hills and provides a catalyst to the imagination - a backdrop that becomes both magnificent and eerie. It is its own character within my story of Appalachia
The people who inhabit the photographs are my upper middle class family and friends in West Virginia. They play slightly exaggerated roles of themselves within sets I have constructed using their homes, furniture and objects. After I create my depiction of each character I carefully assemble the images to build my concept of home. The end product is a strand of life pulled from the whole.
Outsiders have long fictionalized the narrative surrounding Appalachia. As a resident of West Virginia I have always been aware of the views others hold of my home, and they have guided me to create my own version of life in the hills. My Appalachia is a granulated depiction based on the false impressions of others, my idealizations and personal experiences.
Light plays an important role in how I understand this place. The warm southern sun creates a glow that pours over the mountains, rivers and forests creating long shadows, dark recesses and gray mists that blanket the landscape. This unique quality of light is inherent to the hills and provides a catalyst to the imagination - a backdrop that becomes both magnificent and eerie. It is its own character within my story of Appalachia
The people who inhabit the photographs are my upper middle class family and friends in West Virginia. They play slightly exaggerated roles of themselves within sets I have constructed using their homes, furniture and objects. After I create my depiction of each character I carefully assemble the images to build my concept of home. The end product is a strand of life pulled from the whole.
Appalachia pulls at me like a haunted memory. There is an ineffable force that compels me to suspend reality and embrace superstition and myth. It is a longing to hold on to my culture and history in spite of the modern world. The nebulous forests, enveloping moss and dark corners seem to tell a purer truth.
Storytelling in Appalachia has a long-standing tradition, and it infuses the region with mystery. Using lore, pseudo-scientific study, and personal experiences as a compass I see this place through idealized eyes of wonder, and these images become my personal folklore. They bring to life the fantasies and memories I carry with me. This is a place where you can wash away sin in cool stream waters, where corpse birds come to ferry away souls to the next life, rocks burn and kudzu conceals. This is the place where the prevailing winds whisper old stories to those who know how to listen.
The New Vrindaban is a Krishna community in the pastoral hills of Appalachia, and is the vision of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder and spiritual leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. One of Prabhupada’s dreams was to establish a holy pilgrimage site in North America. The New Vrindaban in West Virginia is the realization of that dream. It was conceived to echo Vrindaban, India. According to many Hindu religions, Vrindaban in India is where Krishna took human form and the devotees of the Krishna faith understand it to be the equivalent of Heaven on Earth.
I began photographing the New Vrindaban community in order to explore a part of my home in Appalachia that was unfamiliar to me. Through many visits, conversations and experiences I found a multinational group living together in an attempt to create a utopian society based in Krishna Consciousness ideals. Some of the residents are simply passing through on a spiritual quest and some have been there for decades completely devoted to the community and upkeep of the grounds, which have become an extravagant memorial to their spiritual leader Prabhupada.
Not all of the residents at New Vrindaban are transplants from distant locations; some are originally from the surrounding area and have a similar upbringing to other Appalachians such as myself. The culture at New Vrindaban, though at odds with the traditional context of Appalachia, does not exist in a vacuum. For example seeing traditional Krishna robes paired with steel-toed boots and blue-collar workwear is common. These types of juxtapositions between familiar cultural markers and the anomalous is what I find so intriguing and pleasantly jarring.
I have been missing from my home for quite some time. Mirages of it seem to materialize, but they prove only to be unfaithful vignettes. I visit often, but my experiences invariably wither into woolgathering. I have a profound longing for my home that once was, but I have trouble reconciling the truth with my memories. There is residue, but not substance. I have had two children and started a new life, and I am beginning to feel outside myself. These images serve as a materialized chimera that I hope to pass along. I find myself asking, what is more important, to offer the legacy of the land itself or the myth that surrounds it?
“it has become a dimming dream in which little things stand out and the rest is blurred, but beautifully, because it is of memory.
“Robert Laxalt, Sweet Promised Land
The Sweet promised land is an archival project pulled from many historical Appalachian photographers as well as from my own image library. The resulting combination is heavily altered digitally and then subsequently printed using platinum on 100 percent fiber rag paper to serve as a lasting record for my children. It is a poetic look at my memories and the region that is their birth right.
