The Face of Appalachia: Portraits from the Mountain Farm (Hardcover)

Description

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The Face of Appalachia: Portraits from the Mountain Farm is the culmination of over twenty years of work by acclaimed photographer Tim Barnwell. Combining beautiful landscapes with tender portraits, his superb black-and-white images provide a moving record of a vanishing way of life on the mountain farms of rural Appalachia. Over one hundred photographs, reproduced here in elegant duotone, are accompanied by conversations with the subjects. The images and lyrical text give insight into the daily lives, activities, and dreams of the hard-working, proud, and resourceful men and women of this unique area of our country.
Transcending their geographical origins, these photographs depict how our forefathers lived for generations, with seemingly little change, before modern industry, roads, and technology transformed the country from an agrarian society to the information age we live in today.
The rugged and remote mountains of southern Appalachian region have served to isolate and preserve the last vestiges of life as it once was throughout America. By documenting this disappearing way of life, Mr. Barnwell has captured the essence, beauty, and character of the rural landscape and its people, for this and future generations.

About the Author

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Tim Barnwell is a photographer and author based in Asheville, North Carolina, and is one of the most published photographers in the South. He has been a principal or contributing photographer to dozens of books and is the author of eight of his own-The Face of Appalachia: Portraits from the Mountain Farm, On Earth’s Furrowed Brow: The Appalachian Farm in Photographs, Hands in Harmony: Traditional Crafts and Music in Appalachia, Blue Ridge Parkway Vistas: A Comprehensive Identification Guide to What you See from the Many Overlooks, Great Smoky Mountains Vistas: A Guide, with Mountain Peak Identifications, for What To See and Do in and Around the National Park, Faces and Places of Cashiers Valley, Tide Runners: Shrimping and Fishing on the Carolinas and Georgia Coast, and Jewels of the Southern Coast: Architectural Gems of Charleston, Savannah and Beyond. He has provided principal photography for numerous other books, including Asheville: A View from the Top, Pisgah Forest and Nonconnah: The Potteries of Walter B. Stevens, Wladimir de Terlikowski: His Life and Art, and Frances Goodrich's Brown Book of Weaving Drafts (volumes 1 & 2). His images have appeared in dozens of magazines, including Time, Newsweek, Southern Accents, House Beautiful, American Craft, Outdoor Photographer, US Air, Mother Jones, Sky and Telescope, Blue Ridge Country, Billboard, U.S. News and World Report, Travel South, American Style, Smithsonian, Woodwork, Our State, Black & White Magazine, Smoky Mountain Living, Aperture, LensWork, Fiberarts, Astronomy, Parents, Ceramics Monthly, and National Parks. His career has spanned more than 30 years as a professional photographer and photography instructor, including eight years as Executive Director of the nationally recognized Appalachian Photographic Workshops (1981-1988). As director he designed, coordinated, and taught year-round workshops with staff and visiting master photographers including Cole Weston, Ernst Hass, George Tice, Galen Rowell, Freeman Patterson, Jerry Uelsmann, Robert Farber, John Shaw, Sonja Bullaty, Angelo Lomeo, Ken Marcus, John Sexton, Nancy Brown, Art Wolfe, Steve Krongard, E. Alan McGee, Dean Conger, and Carson Graves. Mr. Barnwell is known as a master photographer and printer. His fine art photography is widely collected and has been included in many group and one-man shows in the US and abroad. His images are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, Mint Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Greenville (SC) County Museum of Art, Mint Museum, Asheville Art Museum, SOHO Photo Gallery, Newark Museum, the Bank of America corporate collection, and Booth Western Art Museum. His fine art photography is represented by Lumiere Gallery in Atlanta. He is an Honorary Member of the Southern Highlands Craft Guild and a member of Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.

Praise For…

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“[Tim Barnwell] may be the most gifted documentary photographer to come out of Appalachia since the Depression. Barnwell emulates F.S.A. (Farm Security Administration) masters with superb subject material, good, clean images, and a solid point of view. And he knows the territory. Barnwell revives the freshness in photos of baptisms in the creeks, families in their shacks, farmers plowing, and social gatherings at the general store. These photos seem to say that not much has changed in Appalachia over the last 50 years.” --The Village Voice, New York

“Tim Barnwell approaches the Appalachian farm with a reverence that only one with generations of mountain heritage can bring to his subject. His combination of intimate knowledge and awareness of a wider audience is rare, and the resulting photographic documents are rarer still.” -Carson Graves, author of The Elements of Black-and-White
Printing and The Zone System for 35mm Photographers

“Tim is a warm and caring human being, which is evident in these moving and graceful images. They are each treasures-beautiful, well-seen and finely crafted.” --Cole Weston, photographer