ADAMS: Salt & Truth
Salt & Truth
SHELBY LEE ADAMS
December 1, 2011 – January 28, 2012
2012
Hardcover
Dimensions: 12 ¼ x 9 ¾ inches
128 pages, 80 plates
ISBN 978-0-9845739-1-2
ABOUT THE BOOK
Salt & Truth is the fourth book from American photographer Shelby Lee Adams (1950-present). This collection of 80 new photographs, taken over the past eight years, continues a project the artist has been working on now for over 30 years. Together these powerful images of the hollow dwellers of eastern Kentucky, represent a singular access to a world that is historically not very trusting of outsiders, by a photographer who is widely recognized as a master of the medium.
Since the release of his last book, Appalachian Lives (2003), Adams has continued to add to his extraordinary body of work. Born in Hazard, Kentucky and raised in a hollow similar to those in the book, Adams’ connection to the people in his photographs is evident in the way that he has been openly welcomed into their homes and lives. Adams, along with his 4×5 view camera, is allowed into the personal space of his subjects, a witness in times of celebration as well as times of hardship. The photographs in this collection are of children and animals, of older folks, of working people, and the various details as seen through Adams camera, speak eloquently to the larger issues of faith and respect and compassion when many others might have seen only poverty and desperation. Adams knows what it means to be from this place, of this place.
ABOUT THE LIMITED EDITION
Limited Edition of Salt & Truth With Print:
Candela Books is proud to be working directly with Shelby Lee Adams on a limited edition of Salt & Truth. The first 70 copies of the book come in a clothbound clamshell case, with a choice of one of two 8″x10″ gelatin silver prints by the artist. The two available prints are Frankie with Shucky Beans, 2002 and Billy and Bethany with Coonskins, 2004 (shown above).
The price of the limited editions will increase in cost as the edition sells. The Candela store price reflects the current selling price for each version of the limited edition. Please inquire for more information about tiered pricing.
ABOUT SHELBY LEE ADAMS
Shelby Lee Adams is renowned for his environmental portraiture, primarily from the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky. Adams’ work has been featured in three monographs: Appalachian Portraits (1993), Appalachian Legacy (1998), and Appalachian Lives (2003) and has received numerous grants and awards. Most recently, Adams was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010.
Adams’ work is represented in many major permanent collections; including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York.
SALT & TRUTH
published by Candela Books
2012
Hardcover
Dimensions: 12 ¼ x 9 ¾ inches
128 pages, 80 plates
ISBN 978-0-9845739-1-2
ABOUT THE PROJECT
For more than thirty-five years, American photographer Shelby Lee Adams has worked dedicatedly and deliberately with a view camera and film, returning each year to eastern Kentucky, to the mountains where he was born and raised, to the people he has befriended and been accepted by, to create a lasting chronicle of a mountain people.
Adams is often touted as a photographer of Appalachia and that is a fair description though perhaps not specific enough. Adams has worked all these years mostly in some six or seven counties in Eastern Kentucky, the area in which his family had lived for generations. The people that he connects with are comprised of the same fabric of which he himself is made. Part southern, part social, part guarded, part generous, part spiritual and, uniquely, part holler.
Of the eighty photographs in this collection, most were taken over the past seven years and for those who have followed his remarkable career, these photographs demonstrate how, in some ways, these hollers have changed with time. While the satellite dishes and University of Kentucky t-shirts suggest the encroachment of a larger culture, the timeless faces and the extended families on front porches remind us that some ideas, and some people, remain constant.
At his roots, Adams is a humanist. He doesn’t judge his subjects and his images are essentially collaborative in nature. These are documents fashioned to record an authentic time and place and meant to expose the depth and character of a disappearing lifestyle. Common to all of these images, is a sense of dignity and of perseverance supported by an extraordinary measure of trust because Adams’s distinctive ability has as much to do with the intuitive nature of compassion and acceptance as it does the technical and visual mastery of the photographic process.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
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