Updated January 2025
Berthie viewing book Appalachian Portraits for the first time in 1993 with son Joe and Terry Riddle, a neighbor.
In the summer of 1992, I visited Berthie to ask her to sign a model release giving me permission to use her picture in my first book Appalachian Portraits. Even though for years she had enjoyed my photographs and had them displayed in her home, she told me that signing papers was not good, and that it must be a bad book I was doing. I learned from members of the community that she was illiterate and was probably afraid because she had once signed a crooked deed and lost some land to a mining company.
Returned with a local minister known to the family; he read my request, and she reluctantly signed. When the book came out, before seeing Berthie was still convinced it would be no good. As she opened the book and looked through it for the first time, I photographed her and her family. She laughed and studied each picture at length. She loved seeing her husband's pictures and talked about what a good time we all had when we made The Hog Killing. She told me she would keep this book for as long as she lived, together with the other good book she had, the Bible. She keeps personal photos and treasures locked in a trunk at the foot of her bed "so the boy's won't get 'em and go sell 'em, she said.
Published in LensWork Quarterly, Portland, #27, Jan. 2000
John and Berthie Standing, 1988
Returned with a local minister known to the family; he read my request, and she reluctantly signed. When the book came out, before seeing Berthie was still convinced it would be no good. As she opened the book and looked through it for the first time, I photographed her and her family. She laughed and studied each picture at length. She loved seeing her husband's pictures and talked about what a good time we all had when we made The Hog Killing. She told me she would keep this book for as long as she lived, together with the other good book she had, the Bible. She keeps personal photos and treasures locked in a trunk at the foot of her bed "so the boy's won't get 'em and go sell 'em, she said.
Published in LensWork Quarterly, Portland, #27, Jan. 2000
Jamie and Nay Bug, 2008
Nay Bug is first cousin to the Napier's and now living in Beehive
with husband Jamie Adams.
Nay Bug and Jamie, 2008
Shelby photographing Nay Bug and Jamie, 2008.
Photographer P. Paletti
Nay Bug, 2009
Nay Bug is first cousin to the Napier's and now living in Beehive
with husband Jamie Adams.
Nay Bug and Jamie, 2008
Shelby photographing Nay Bug and Jamie, 2008.Photographer P. Paletti
Nay Bug, 2009“The mountaineer would like to have just one person—one day—come into his hollow and show some sign of approval of the way he has lived over the decades, and the way he wants to live forever. And not try to change him without first knowing him.”
John Fetterman—Stinking Creek
Published by GOST Books, London, 2023,
"From the Head of the Hollers."
Berthie 1988
Berthie lived in a holler called Beehive, a part of Slemp and Leatherwood Ky. I met her through a local preacher who took me to meet her and her family. She told me she had brought into this world16 children. When I first met her, she said she had 8 children living and 8 dead, this was in 1985. Bertie out lived most of her children. I met her husband John and several sons and one daughter. They were open and friendly allowing me to start making pictures with them on the first visit. One-time Berthie ask me to stay for dinner. We had groundhog, potatoes and poke salad.
Berthie told me , when she was hoeing corn one time on a hillside and was carrying a child she suddenly went into labor and just squatted down having the baby in the corn field. Berthie walked home carrying her new baby. As making funeral pictures is a custom of some mountain folk, I had previously photographed two of her children’s funeral’s, Dan who got ran over by a train in 1991 and her daughter Mary who died with cancer in ‘94. In 1998 I photographed Berthie’s funeral in Viper, Kentucky, she was 74 years old when she passed. Bertie lived an extraordinary life.
Other photographs of Berthie and her family can be found in my new book, “From the Heads of the Hollers,” published by GOST Books, London. A high quality 11 x 14 inch portfolio book with vividly detailed images.
Darrell and Arch, 2007
Printed 2002
The Napier's Living Room, 1989Published Appalachian Portraits, 1993
The Hog Killing, 1990First published 1993, in Appalachian Portraits, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson.
James and Arch Napier viewing Polaroids with Shelby, 2005
Truth
Today we are suspicious of "Truth," because we recognize that what is called truth is often only a tool in the hands of those in power [the media], and is often determined by their beliefs and tailored to their requirements.
Today we are suspicious of "Truth," because we recognize that what is called truth is often only a tool in the hands of those in power [the media], and is often determined by their beliefs and tailored to their requirements.
Lionel Corbett
An Insiders Perspective - From 2007 interview, "Mountain Voices."
"An outsider already has an idea of what they think about me before they meet me or hear me speak. They see your pictures different than I do to. You look at "The Hog Killing, '90," picture, that makes me think, my memories come back, I could feel the cold mornings from my childhood, in the dark and having the water on the fire boilin' before daylight, we killed the hog, the neighbors come over and what a time we had, we was scrappin', workin', it was an event, we made cracklin's, history, that's what it is. These pictures are life. That's fantastic; no one had to tell me that. That meat from your makin' that photo fed those families for three months, we know that, ain't no stagin' to that, that's good as we see it. You don't try and paint no picture that's untrue. There's a life that's goin', but I can still look at 'em and still recall it in your pictures. We have culture, that's what that picture is about and that means everything."
Hobert White, Eagle's Nest, KY
Additional Interview on Hog Killing:
Steve
Steve
Huff Interview 2010.
_____
___
____________
In 2016 I commissioned a video to be made using my photography edited in a manner under my direction.
Link Below
Hort Collins, Photographs and Mountain Music
_____
___
____________
In 2016 I commissioned a video to be made using my photography edited in a manner under my direction.
Link Below
Hort Collins, Photographs and Mountain Music
________________________________________________________
The Napier Family
The Napier Family, '89
The Fly Swat, '92
The Napier's with Dog's, '88Published in Appalachian Portraits, 1993
Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part [and it may be the larger part] always comes out of our own minds.
William James
The Napier Brothers with Puppies, '92Published in Appalachian Legacy, 1998
“The More we neglect those on the periphery of society, the more we invite evil into our lives. The greater our neglect, the greater the chance for evil rebounding upon us.”
Cormac McCarthy
The Child of God
“The portraits that demonstrate the ‘affect’ of lives lived in a state of repression, oppression and trauma mirror through to the viewer identity of his own personal ‘affects,’ something many viewer's may unconsciously deny or not wish to acknowledge within themselves.”
Shelby Lee Adams
“The More we neglect those on the periphery of society, the more we invite evil into our lives. The greater our neglect, the greater the chance for evil rebounding upon us.”
Cormac McCarthy
The Child of God
“The portraits that demonstrate the ‘affect’ of lives lived in a state of repression, oppression and trauma mirror through to the viewer identity of his own personal ‘affects,’ something many viewer's may unconsciously deny or not wish to acknowledge within themselves.”
Shelby Lee Adams
Jerry, '04
Jerry, '87
Printed 1990
Arch, 2005
Printed 2022
Joe at Mother's Funeral, '98Published in Appalachian Lives, 2003
 |
| Polaroids made at Dan's funeral, 1991 |
Mary, '89
Mary on Bed, '90
Mary and Roy, 1988
printed 2021
Berthie, 1988
Printed 2021
Berthie at Mary's [daughter] Funeral, '94
James at Sisters Funeral, '94
Jerry at Brother James Funeral, June '09
James and I have been friends since the mid-1980's.
He is sorely missed by his family and many friends.
James was a man who would give you whatever he had, with a heart of gold.
James quote - "I Love This."
Jerry at Brother James Funeral, June '09
Last photo of James, October 2008
Last Photo Session with James, October, 2008
Photographer - Mia Baxter
Berthie, '88 "Had sixteen children in my family-you wouldn't believe that, would you! Eight dead and eight livin'! Lord, they drank and get out and get killed, and everything. You know, you can't put sense on 'em. But when they was small, they mind me good, till they got to be twenty-two or twenty-three. Now, Lord have mercy!"
Berthie Napier, Beehive, Kentucky '88
Berthie on Bed, '96
Berthie with Pipe & John, '92
Berthie being photographed 1987
Dan Napier's Funeral, '91
John and Arch '91
105 Degree's, '94
James, '03
Published in Salt & Truth, 2011
 |
| Berthie and the Boy's, 1994 Published in, "From the Heads of the Holler's, 2023, GOST Books, London |
All photographs and text copyrighted - © 1988-2025 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.
Shelby with Napier Family, '90
Photographer Moldenhauer
What comes from the depths of one's searching ? Does time, memory, long term relationships and multiple portrait sessions create validity and penetrate to greater truths ? Every photograph made presents an opportunity for a new way of seeing and image making.
Shelby Lee Adams
May 2007Photo credits: Zwalethu Mthethwa, "Zwalethu Mthethwa", Marco Noire Editore Torino, '99, Italy
Lewis Hine, "America & Lewis Hine", Editor Walter Rosenblum, Aperture,
1977, NYC
Walker Evans, "Walker Evans, Photographs for the Farm Security Administration 1935-1938", De Capro Press, 1973, NYC
The Napier's Living Room, 1989
Essay
The Napier's Living Room, 1989 In the early '80's I was taken to visit the Napier family by a local preacher and friend Wayne from Leatherwood. I was advised not to drive my car, as the roads were rough. We loaded my equipment into the back of my friend's pickup truck and drove into the head of the holler called Beehive. Leaving the main road we're driving up a single lane dirt road that went through the creek three times with deep washed out gullies. Underbrush and tree limbs scrapped the sides of Wayne's truck as we drove. Suddenly, we were in an open valley populated with several small houses, smoke ambling out of the chimneys, chickens everywhere, a white mule is in the barnyard and hound dogs came running and barking, their barks echoing through the valley.
Getting out of the truck, this place felt like being taken back in time. Electric was minimally wired from a black 1/2 inch rubber coated cord that was propped up by wood planks with crooked nails on end. No meter box in sight. The well was hand dug, with a wooden box over it; a hemp rope and metal pulley were attached to draw clear buckets of water. Each house appeared pieced together with wood scraps, cardboard and rusty tin roofing materials. The smoke smelled of fresh pinewood and cedar. This seemingly time warped community was more like visiting an early American pioneer life reenactment village, but it was not.
Meeting John and Berthie Napier was easy, they were friendly, John's laugh was fastidious and Berthie smiling, shy, pipe in mouth, head rag on, they were openly glad to have company. When my friend Wayne introduced me as a photographer, John told me about a photographer he remembered, who used to travel by horseback. When John saw my view camera and tripod he nodded, and said, "same thing". Berthie swept the dirt yard with a broom intermittently, shooing the chickens and diddles away, it seemed as a habit of housework. Two of the Napier's sons wandered over to their parents' home, one at a time, from their houses and said hello, we shook hands and stood around talking.
Lewis Hine, Miner's family, Scott's Run, West Virginia, '36
When leaving after my first visit, my head was spinning. I had never met a family like the Napier's. Their world was of the pure old Appalachian spirit, I had only witnessed this growing up. They had somehow survived without adapting to modern ways. That summer, I had a few more visits but always relying on someone taking me by truck. I was in my mid-thirties then and felt this family was one of the most important I'd met. I went back to Massachusetts and began researching four-wheel drive vehicles and by the summer of '88 I had purchased a new Nissan Pathfinder, if for no other reason than to visit the Napier's.
This family represented the true spirit from which many mountain people came. They had not been photographed by the media or affected by modern ways, and they were open to me. Non of them owned a TV. The Napier's represented authentically the old mountain culture I remembered from childhood. If any flaw existed it was the incongruity in time. Their lifestyle appeared to be from a century ago, except for small details like the logos on men's caps reading "Camel Joe" or "Michael Jackson". When photographing if I ask a subject to remove something I felt was out of character and they resisted, I agreed to their wishes. Conceding to their wishes in a photograph is as important as my idealism of the culture or how one gets to know a new family. If I felt we really missed something in the making of an image, next year I'd show the subject what we did before and we would make a new image, making something different. My knowledge of the history of photography, the FSA period, the War On Poverty era, my own childhood experiences and my subjects, all inform my compositions.
Walker Evans, A Miner's Home, West Virginia, 1935
One of the first Napier environments that interested me had a complex history, both personal and historically. The use of newsprint and cardboard as wallpaper on the inside of modest homes became iconic in the photographic work of Lewis Hines, long before the FSA depression era photographs were made. Later Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Russell Lee and others, even writers like James Agee; all used this background to inform their work. Evans was the first to see and use this material in an aesthetic manner. This influenced the sixties, Andy Warhol's generation and more contemporary artwork today for example, Zwelethu Mthethwa. Here it was in Beehive, Kentucky.
Remembering as a child in the late '50's when I was in 2nd grade through 6th grade, I visited many homes with my mother while she was distributing annually my used school clothes to needy families with other clothing she had collected. Some country homes in the hollers of the '50's had this type of interior wall coverings. We didn't think anything of it, it was a way of keeping the cold wind and weather out. No one could afford insulation or better building materials. I only had a memory of this kind of environment from the 1950's until I say the FSA photographs. Country stores gave away advertising posters, cardboard, and newspapers, we saw it as shelter. For some mountain people, this just became a tradition. Every spring you redid the walls and ceilings with fresh newspaper and cardboard removing the winters blackened coal dust wall coverings.
Zwelethu Mthethwa, '99, Near Cape Town, South Africa
Part of the school year, I attended the Hot Spot Elementary School in the mountains where my grandparents lived and the rest of the time I traveled with my father, attending school where ever his work took us, all up and down the Eastern seaboard. Some of my Kentucky classmates wore my older clothes to school. They let me know that they resented it too, which I did not understand as a child. In my high school years, the newspaper background environments resurfaced, charged with new media underhanded covert activity. The '60's and early '70's was the time of the War on Poverty, the Vista workers and Peace Corps all came to Appalachia. When in art school at age 21 in 1971I had my first viewing of the FSA photography, I strongly disliked this work. It took some time for me to come to terms with the depression era photography, without feeling angry.
Berthie with Pipe and John, '92
The FSA work is iconic, so much so, that the outside media of the '60's and '70's, during the War on Poverty era came to Appalachia looking for the same. As photographers, journalist and filmmakers the media sent in outsiders who did not know anything about the culture in search of poverty trophies. If the newsprint backgrounds could not be found, and they often could not, times had changed. Poor families were compromised, paid to paste and glue newsprint to their kitchen walls and homes for photographs and films to be made.
Getting out of the truck, this place felt like being taken back in time. Electric was minimally wired from a black 1/2 inch rubber coated cord that was propped up by wood planks with crooked nails on end. No meter box in sight. The well was hand dug, with a wooden box over it; a hemp rope and metal pulley were attached to draw clear buckets of water. Each house appeared pieced together with wood scraps, cardboard and rusty tin roofing materials. The smoke smelled of fresh pinewood and cedar. This seemingly time warped community was more like visiting an early American pioneer life reenactment village, but it was not.
Meeting John and Berthie Napier was easy, they were friendly, John's laugh was fastidious and Berthie smiling, shy, pipe in mouth, head rag on, they were openly glad to have company. When my friend Wayne introduced me as a photographer, John told me about a photographer he remembered, who used to travel by horseback. When John saw my view camera and tripod he nodded, and said, "same thing". Berthie swept the dirt yard with a broom intermittently, shooing the chickens and diddles away, it seemed as a habit of housework. Two of the Napier's sons wandered over to their parents' home, one at a time, from their houses and said hello, we shook hands and stood around talking.
Lewis Hine, Miner's family, Scott's Run, West Virginia, '36When leaving after my first visit, my head was spinning. I had never met a family like the Napier's. Their world was of the pure old Appalachian spirit, I had only witnessed this growing up. They had somehow survived without adapting to modern ways. That summer, I had a few more visits but always relying on someone taking me by truck. I was in my mid-thirties then and felt this family was one of the most important I'd met. I went back to Massachusetts and began researching four-wheel drive vehicles and by the summer of '88 I had purchased a new Nissan Pathfinder, if for no other reason than to visit the Napier's.
This family represented the true spirit from which many mountain people came. They had not been photographed by the media or affected by modern ways, and they were open to me. Non of them owned a TV. The Napier's represented authentically the old mountain culture I remembered from childhood. If any flaw existed it was the incongruity in time. Their lifestyle appeared to be from a century ago, except for small details like the logos on men's caps reading "Camel Joe" or "Michael Jackson". When photographing if I ask a subject to remove something I felt was out of character and they resisted, I agreed to their wishes. Conceding to their wishes in a photograph is as important as my idealism of the culture or how one gets to know a new family. If I felt we really missed something in the making of an image, next year I'd show the subject what we did before and we would make a new image, making something different. My knowledge of the history of photography, the FSA period, the War On Poverty era, my own childhood experiences and my subjects, all inform my compositions.
Walker Evans, A Miner's Home, West Virginia, 1935Remembering as a child in the late '50's when I was in 2nd grade through 6th grade, I visited many homes with my mother while she was distributing annually my used school clothes to needy families with other clothing she had collected. Some country homes in the hollers of the '50's had this type of interior wall coverings. We didn't think anything of it, it was a way of keeping the cold wind and weather out. No one could afford insulation or better building materials. I only had a memory of this kind of environment from the 1950's until I say the FSA photographs. Country stores gave away advertising posters, cardboard, and newspapers, we saw it as shelter. For some mountain people, this just became a tradition. Every spring you redid the walls and ceilings with fresh newspaper and cardboard removing the winters blackened coal dust wall coverings.
Zwelethu Mthethwa, '99, Near Cape Town, South Africa
Berthie with Pipe and John, '92 This was the time I grew up in a holler. Local people spoke up, they felt manipulated and shamed. Folks said, "They come in here to help us, by makin' us look worse than we are. We don't like it". I grew up within a whirlwind of local gossip, rumors, stories and national media distortions, supposedly, All for the benefit of the people.
In the summer of '89, I spoke with Berthie about photographing in her living room with the newsprint walls. To my surprise, she spoke proudly of them. Berthie told me, she learned "paperin" from her mother. She talked about the mixture of wheat paste and boiled water used in making the glue, how long it took for it to dry, etc. I made a Sunday 10:30 AM morning appointment with her and John to come and photograph in her living room, with whomever they wanted to be photographed.
In the summer of '89, I spoke with Berthie about photographing in her living room with the newsprint walls. To my surprise, she spoke proudly of them. Berthie told me, she learned "paperin" from her mother. She talked about the mixture of wheat paste and boiled water used in making the glue, how long it took for it to dry, etc. I made a Sunday 10:30 AM morning appointment with her and John to come and photograph in her living room, with whomever they wanted to be photographed.
Berthie greeted me on the porch next morning, her hands were dirty, with dried paste and her forehead was sweaty. She said, "Now, I want you to know I've got a brand new living room; stayed up till 2:00 this mornin' repapering everything." I felt my heart sink to the floor, thinking she had taken out the newsprint and painted over everything.
Entering the living room, she said, "I got to studyin', I didn't want you to come take pictures with my smoked-up ceilings black from the winter coal fires, so I got the boys to help me repaper everything last night. It looks better clean don't you think?" "Sure doe's," I said, as I looked with relief. Dan and James, two son's came over with Tricky, a pet dog. I set up my camera and lights and we began making Polaroid's, we were exposing film by noon.
Napier's Living Room, '89
Photographing "The Napier's Living Room", 1989 was made to make "amens," as country folk would say. Somehow, to put to rest some personal shame and dissatisfaction with the media within myself and to contribute to this outsider/insider historical litany of images, this photo was important. It speaks with authenticity for me; it is made with the subject's awareness, cooperation and enthusiasm. That is important to all my portrait and environmental photographs. Further, I had no specific adjindia or approach, but many memories and thoughts of how this situation might be rendered.
Napier's Living Room, '89 We all get caught; we view such photographs and see them with our minds eye, with different agendas, our on personal histories, typecasting and biases, forming opinions without an open mind. I knew of media people who paid families to plaster the interior walls of their new fiberboard kitchens with newsprint and then photograph the family's children in front of these newsprint backgrounds with children running around half-naked and dirty. Some media people got threatened and even assaulted for this. A long history exists and it is still a thorny and complicated subject here. This was going on during The War on Poverty years.
It is my intent to make photographs like "The Napier's Living Room" with an open mind and heart, listening to my subjects and their experiences. To collaborate and make images together forms a kinship and establishes bonding. To understand this family so proud, yet vulnerable was my goal. This was the correct moment, even if it appears 60 years out of context to modern times. Hopefully, the viewer might see something "a new" without preconceived ideas, stereotypes, or bias opinions, certainly with no political agendas. Just observe how life is lived by some. That to requires an open mind from the viewer.
It is my intent to make photographs like "The Napier's Living Room" with an open mind and heart, listening to my subjects and their experiences. To collaborate and make images together forms a kinship and establishes bonding. To understand this family so proud, yet vulnerable was my goal. This was the correct moment, even if it appears 60 years out of context to modern times. Hopefully, the viewer might see something "a new" without preconceived ideas, stereotypes, or bias opinions, certainly with no political agendas. Just observe how life is lived by some. That to requires an open mind from the viewer.
Shelby with Napier Family, '90Photographer Moldenhauer
Shelby Lee Adams
May 2007Photo credits: Zwalethu Mthethwa, "Zwalethu Mthethwa", Marco Noire Editore Torino, '99, Italy
Lewis Hine, "America & Lewis Hine", Editor Walter Rosenblum, Aperture,
1977, NYC
Walker Evans, "Walker Evans, Photographs for the Farm Security Administration 1935-1938", De Capro Press, 1973, NYC
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.
All photographs and text copyrighted - © 1978 - 2025 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.
All photographs and text copyrighted - © 1978 - 2025 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.
