Frankie with Shucky Beans, '02
Observations from the mountains to the gallery after 35 years.
One intention of my photography is to provide a release for you, to free and propel you towards an engagement with another part of humanity. Don’t hypothesize just simply see and be with what is. Can the photograph represent two distinct thoughts and points of view? No, not when we see we are of the same world, no matter how extreme our positions in life.
Only when you give up the desire to photograph or change someone can you experience them clearly and accept them fully. Then you can represent them more deeply felt. Faced with lives that are severe, lives that you would like to change, restrain yourself. To impose your values on others is ultimately to ridicule them. Give abundantly of yourself, be patient; growth and vision will come full circle.
To know family secrets or taboos, or the absence of them, activates our ideals, projections and defenses. How we view others and ourselves is inseparable from our experiences and mental constraints. Often we cannot see or engage what is before us, we all need recognition, approval, acceptance and love from our chosen ‘herd’. This need blinds you from seeing the real circumstances of others. Yet, this vulnerable area filled with emotions, humanness and sameness is where, eventually, we all connect. The other is you and me. Grace is established in the sharing.
Shelby Lee Adams
May 1, 08
One intention of my photography is to provide a release for you, to free and propel you towards an engagement with another part of humanity. Don’t hypothesize just simply see and be with what is. Can the photograph represent two distinct thoughts and points of view? No, not when we see we are of the same world, no matter how extreme our positions in life.
Only when you give up the desire to photograph or change someone can you experience them clearly and accept them fully. Then you can represent them more deeply felt. Faced with lives that are severe, lives that you would like to change, restrain yourself. To impose your values on others is ultimately to ridicule them. Give abundantly of yourself, be patient; growth and vision will come full circle.
To know family secrets or taboos, or the absence of them, activates our ideals, projections and defenses. How we view others and ourselves is inseparable from our experiences and mental constraints. Often we cannot see or engage what is before us, we all need recognition, approval, acceptance and love from our chosen ‘herd’. This need blinds you from seeing the real circumstances of others. Yet, this vulnerable area filled with emotions, humanness and sameness is where, eventually, we all connect. The other is you and me. Grace is established in the sharing.
Shelby Lee Adams
May 1, 08
Frankie on Porch, Oct. '07[Frankie now age '91]
Shelby and John on Porch, June 07, Busy, KentuckyPhotographer Pam Spaulding, Louisville Courier-Journal
Artist Statement
Every summer, traveling through the mountains photographing, I am somehow able to renew and relive my childhood. I regain my southern, mountain accent and approach my people with openness, fascination, and respect; and they treat me with respect. My psychic antennae become sharpened and acute. I love these people, perhaps that is it, plain and simple. I respond to the sensual beauty of a hardened face with many scars, the deeply etched lines and flickers of sweat containing bright spots of sunlight. The eyes of my subjects reveal a kindness and curiosity, and their acceptance of me is gratifying. For me, this is rejuvenation of the spirit of time past, and I am better for the experience each time it happens. These portraits are, in a way, self-portraits that represent a long autobiographical exploration of creativity, imagination, vision, repulsion and salvation. My greatest fear as a photographer is to look into the eyes of my subject and not see my own reflection.
My work has been an artist search for a deeper understanding of my heritage and myself, using photography as a medium and the Appalachian people as collaborators with their own desires to communicate. I hope, too, that viewers, will see in these photographs something of the abiding strength and resourcefulness and dignity of the mountain people.
Shelby Lee Adams
Attention
We need an unprejudiced mind to see what-is; we cannot see what-is and respond to it if the mind is trying to change or suppress it. We resist what-is because we are afraid of the unknown, or because what-is contradicts what we have been conditioned to believe, or because it threatens us. The resulting fear prevents from us accepting what-is. Resistance to what-is may look like strength, but actually arises from fear, whereas it is powerful and freeing to accept what-is.
Surrender means allowing life to happen rather than opposing the flow of life, accepting the present moment without resistance. The necessary action will then arise, but when we act out of acceptance rather than resistance, we act without negativity or judgment. Action that arises out of acceptance is different from action that arises out of rage and hatred. Action that arises from a state of surrender is less contaminated with judgment and the need to hurt others. We simply do what needs to be done without labeling the situation as good or bad according to the ego’s criteria.
Lionel Corbett
Psyche and Sacred
All photographs and text copyrighted - Shelby Lee Adams and additional authors, permissions request, send e mails.
My work has been an artist search for a deeper understanding of my heritage and myself, using photography as a medium and the Appalachian people as collaborators with their own desires to communicate. I hope, too, that viewers, will see in these photographs something of the abiding strength and resourcefulness and dignity of the mountain people.
Shelby Lee Adams
Attention
We need an unprejudiced mind to see what-is; we cannot see what-is and respond to it if the mind is trying to change or suppress it. We resist what-is because we are afraid of the unknown, or because what-is contradicts what we have been conditioned to believe, or because it threatens us. The resulting fear prevents from us accepting what-is. Resistance to what-is may look like strength, but actually arises from fear, whereas it is powerful and freeing to accept what-is.
Surrender means allowing life to happen rather than opposing the flow of life, accepting the present moment without resistance. The necessary action will then arise, but when we act out of acceptance rather than resistance, we act without negativity or judgment. Action that arises out of acceptance is different from action that arises out of rage and hatred. Action that arises from a state of surrender is less contaminated with judgment and the need to hurt others. We simply do what needs to be done without labeling the situation as good or bad according to the ego’s criteria.
Lionel Corbett
Psyche and Sacred
All photographs and text copyrighted - Shelby Lee Adams and additional authors, permissions request, send e mails.
posted by Shelby Lee Adams at
11:10 AM
