ALERT (03/07/2024): Due to a lightning strike, WVPB TV will be off the air in the Bethany/Wheeling area until new parts arrive. Thank you for your patience.
Harpers Ferry is a historic West Virginia city and international tourist hub. But four years ago the national park and surrounding town were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
“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.”
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?”
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
Harpers Ferry is a historic West Virginia city and international tourist hub. But four years ago the national park and surrounding town were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
On this West Virginia Morning, tourists from around the world visit Harpers Ferry each year to immerse themselves in U.S. history. But the number of visitors fell in 2020, as public health restrictions ramped up nationwide. Jack Walker visited the town to learn how things have changed since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
This week's broadcast of Mountain Stage was recorded at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, CA. On this episode, host Kathy Mattea welcomes GRAMMY-winning Australian rock star Colin Hay, Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, legendary folk and country artist Ramblin' Jack Elliott, San Francisco rocker Chuck Prophet and his band The Make Out Quartet, and folk duo The Lucky Valentines.
Across the nation, there are more and more local news deserts; communities with no local newspaper, television or radio station to cover what’s going on. When a small town paper like The Welch News in McDowell County, WV, can’t compete and shuts down, losing those local eyes and ears can affect accountability. No one is there to watch over things. Local news also provides a sense of cohesion and identity for a community. What happens when it’s gone? This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.