Hollow

Is an interactive web documentary and participatory project representing West Virginia’s McDowell County. It uses photography, video, audio, archival information, and data visualization to tell stories such as support and hope in the wake of a natural disaster; the issues surrounding a shrinking population size; or that of the complicated and continuous exodus of young people from the area to find better opportunities.

Stranger with a camera

Though the central focus of the film investigates the cultural and political circumstances surrounding Jeremiah, Kentucky and the murder of Canadian Filmmaker Hugh O’Connor in 1967, Elizabeth Barret explores the complexities entangled with representation, poverty, pride, and her own identity as an upper-middle-class Appalachian woman and filmmaker. For Barret and the residents of Jeremiah, cameras can become weapons of marginalization and exploitation for already vulnerable peoples. By juxtaposing testimonies from individuals of Jeremiah with witnesses from O’Connor’s film team and utilizing archival footage, Barret creates a holistic understanding of the conditions—politically, culturally, historically, and economically—leading to O’Connor’s death. The film is a powerful statement about the ethics of representation.

Hillbilly

Serving as a personal and political documentary, the film takes the viewer on a journey of Appalachia across space—Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia—and time through various archival records and visual images of Appalachian people. The film asks of the viewer as well as the subjects of the film, how we have internalized visual representations of rural people.

In addition to the film, the companion project Her Appalachia gives women of the region a platform to directly address stereotypes and tell their own stories.

Richard Mullins Photography: The Appalshop Archive Collection

The whitewashing of rural areas in media depictions is dangerously misleading and furthers the erasure of black, immigrant, and native experiences and historical narratives needed to understand the areas more deeply. Appalshop is currently curating a collection of photographs taken by Richard Mullins in Virginia and Kentucky from 1935-1955 highlighting the diversity that exists in the hills. Appalshop is bringing Mullins work to life, by not only digitizing his work, but reaching out to the families photographed and collecting interviews and oral histories.

For example, in the picture to the left is Collins and Effie Hollyfield and their three daughters—Odessa, Collene, and Betty Joyce—taken in 1945. In 1991, the Collins and Effie were interviewed, and we listeners learn of their life together in Kentucky, Collins work in the coal mines and his injuries sustained from it, and of their 12 children! You can listen to their oral histories here.

Portraits and Dreams:

Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians.

As a photography teacher during the 1970s in three rural schools in Letcher County, Kentucky, Wendy Ewald wanted students to “photograph themselves, their families, their animals and their community, and to think about stories they might make with photographs.” She asked how they would describe their lives, their dreams, and their fantasies.

In 2011, one of her former students, Denise Dixon, reached out to discuss the projects impact and her current work as a photographer. This sparked a revisitation to the project, with Ewald discussing the photographs with the student photographers nearly forty years later.