In His Image Northwest Georgia: The Appalachian Foothills
The weather wore the wood till there was nothing left and the smell of rotten eggs from the brake soot carried through the air and left a black on the brick. Resin seeped from sleepers to the ballast in the hot sun and it didn’t let anything grow. Where drudgers cracked the wall of pure pine and nobody heard a sound. The canals run red with mud and whole families of stuck shoes.
Stuck from years of walking.
Stuck from years of working.
Stuck from years down in the root cellar, where the floor stays cold.
The project In His Image is the second volume of an ongoing series in a personal refection of Small Town America. Set in Northwest Georgia, a piece of the heart of the South that has prided itself in the manufacturing of hardwood flooring, carpet and textile, an industry that relies on the landscape. Although, some of the major companies not only remain open but thrive, a number of the smaller factories have been forced to close and sell out. During the recession of 2008, in some counties, layoffs were of record-breaking proportions and a number of towns suffered.
This location becomes the setting and the images remain as cinematic narratives out of the candid everyday. The photographs begin to stand as a metaphor of transition within today’s social-economic climate in towns across the United States. people seem to be waiting, almost unsure of what for. The towns in this section of the rocky Appalachian foothills is a place where the term “the wrong side of the tracks” truly reflects the representation of a class divide, with the railroad splitting many of the towns in two. As a nod to the title, I explore my own experience with the constructs and roles of the Mother/Father figures of a working-class upbringing. The photographs of In His Image are meant to be read intimately, and work to represent the human subject as an identity of a child to the southern landscape.
