Home Page Updated October '09

Armeldia

Adrian College Poster - Nov/Dec. 2009
[Click on image to enlarge]


Chester


Angie


Brother Ish

Martha & Kizzie with Recycled Water Bottles, '09

Vanessa holding Kittens, '09


Leairon & Oma, '09


Rhonda '09


Fess with his Limo, '09


Margaret, '09, age 99
[subject sitting in husbands horse trophy room]


Roy with musical instruments and home-made hats, '09


Click on images to enlarge. New work still to be posted.



Nay Bug, '09


"We need to overcome the dualistic thinking that makes our happiness seem attainable only through others' misery."

Robert Thurman


"From the heads of the Hollers' to the smallest of towns, the big city's to the remotest isolated country we need to understand that we are all connected. Thinking yourself better than others is the worst way to live out a single day. These kind of thoughts perpetuate violence, isolation and prejudice. We each have a choice: stay within our chosen isolation and comfort zone or reach out to others and better serve our larger selves."
SLA
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The photographs below are from what I call my seconds or "community service work." This is a large body of work that I'm currently working with and examining. These photos express for the most part-the joy of my subjects lives, the babies, family rituals and each other. These pictures are part of my people and our relationships, they inform, open and contribute to my other published and exhibited photographs.


Randell, '86


Slone's Porch, '86


Kathy and Baby, '86


Alma Gale and Baby


Grandma Frankie Holding Daughter's New Twins


David Levi Strauss

The truth is, photography can only do a couple of things really well. It can make visible the tracery of a relation, beginning with the relation between the photographer and his or her subject, and it can reflect on death. Neither of these effects is automatic, by any means, but it is possible. One would think that, out of the millions of photographs that have been made between people over the last 165 years, it would have happened more often, but in fact it is exceedingly rare.
I guess that’s because real portraits enact a contradiction: that each human being is unique and, at the same time, alike. There is no such thing as a "typical person." People are very different, one from another. But when you get down below the surface, to the skull, we’re ultimately the same.

David Levi Strauss from writing on Robert Bergman.
The Brooklyn Rail

A Letter from Kentucky

I am 51 and your work shows a lot of the life I experienced. Shucky beans, I love 'em and tell everyone about them but people don't have a clue what I am talking about. These things are heritage that has to be remembered. Baptism's in the creek... dinner on the ground... the wakes for the deceased in the homes... all that is falling by the wayside. I think our country would be in a lot better shape if we still lived like that. Babies drank fresh cows milk strained through a cloth... I shook milk in a jar to make butter and buttermilk...
People don't have a clue. I hope you do more work... bring back more memories... the newspapers used for wallpaper is how my mom learned to read, my dad taught her after they got married. They didn't have TV or anything-so they'd lay in bed and read the walls.

Please tell me you will do more work.
A Fan
Paris, Kentucky
AUGUST 27,'09


"Buddhahood involves a state of complete awareness that finds blissful expression in a compassion that tirelessly embraces all living beings, manifesting whenever necessary to help them reach their own freedom from suffering."

The Dalai Lama

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."

Pema Chodron


"Compassion is a particularly difficult virtue. It demands that we go beyond the limitations of our egotism, insecurity and inherited prejudice."

Karen Armstrong



"Now working for 36 years, within the tradition's of black and white photography expressing the subtlety of inner relationships with people I’ve known for such a long time. It is the depths of trust, relationships and acceptance that transcends beyond just the document inviting you [the viewer] to participate.”

Shelby Lee Adams


“Only when one approaches the work of art nonjudgmentally does it begin to reveal the artist’s personality and creativity and their relationship.’’

Donald Kuspit, “The End of Art”

YOU TUBE Video - Scotty Stidham

Video of Scotty was made in 1993 in S-VHS format. The quality of video suffers here, but the culture and life style is apparent. Scotty lived to be over 100 years old. He lived and farmed his land in Barwick, Ky. He shares his music, views on religion and politics in video. He was and is still endeared and loved by many.

Vimeo Video Format- Scotty Stidham
http://www.vimeo.com/3507045



Photography with the Slone's, Summer 2008


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 - © 2009 Shelby Lee Adams, legal action will be taken to represent the photographer, the work taken out of context, subjects and integrity of all photographic and written works, including additional photographers published and authors quoted. Permissions - send e mail request with project descriptions.