It was hot . . . very hot . . .when I drove into Owensboro.  I had a 4:00 meeting with a US Marshall where I was going to try and get the lay of the land.  I’d photographed in Owensboro 40 years ago for the original Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project, and had made several […]

The Tornado hit Dawson Springs on Friday evening December 10, 2021. It was most likely one of a number of tornados that emerged along a 200+ mile line ranging from Northeast Arkansas through central Kentucky.

Today I returned to my alma mater, Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green to photograph courses amid the global pandemic. I was curious to see how students were handling everyday protocol for mask wearing, distancing and how instructors would be using technology for those at home. I covered a biochemistry lab taught by Dr. Blairanne […]

I have always liked Russellville. It’s in Logan County. The northern section of the county is hilly, bordering, Muhlenberg County. As you go south, the land gets more level, becoming rich farmland. Russellville seemed genteel. The people were (and still are) gracious. The historic architecture is good and of interest. It was always a comfortable […]

I’m always interested in people at work. I began to think a lot about fast food workers and wonder about their lives – and so I made some efforts to photograph them. They are mostly kids and put on big smiles when you face them with a camera. The Sonic Drive In I went to was […]

Leaving Paradise I meandered. I went to the Rochester Dam that John Prine sang about. Rochester is a small town with maybe one store a bank and a post office. I saw a dot on my Delorme Map identifying the town of Gus. My older son’s name is Gus, so I had to go there. […]

In Paducah I arrange to ride with the Police Department. I’m paired with Officer Kelly Drew but we had a fair amount of contact with the other officers on that shift as well. Kelly amazed me with his background (broken home, alcoholic abusive father, but saved by his grandfather who guided him through his adolescence) […]

Lamont Collins, founder of Roots 101 African American Museum, t is holding a slave collar, one of the most horrific devices I’ve ever seen. Slave collars were locked around enslaved peoples necks to keep them from escaping. The weight of the collar and the protrusions, in this case spikes, impeded any sort of movement. Lamont founded Roots 101 to tell “the other half of the story,” the African American experience that has been forgotten or ignored.

Having studied photography, pictures like these orbit my mind on a constant loop whether I am conscious of them or not, reminding me of the power of photography and the significance of the past. On the days when I am presumed a DEA agent, these are the apparitions that coax me onward.

At 351 feet, it towers over the Todd County landscape, the fifth tallest monument in the United States. Driving west on US 68 from Elkton, it immediately comes into view: the Jefferson Davis Monument, sited in the small town of Fairview, Davis’s birthplace.

I’d just spent a wonderful weekend with Pine Mountain Collective, and informal group of artists convened by the Kentucky Natural Lands Trust (KNLT). The KNLT has the vision of purchasing all of the available lands on Pine Mountain and putting them in nature preserves. Pine Mountain is Kentucky’s only true ridge mountain, running 113 miles plus from Tennessee to West Virginia. It’s a unique biosphere with a number of endangered species unique to Pine Mountain.

I went fishing one night for Asian Carp with Ronnie Hopkins near Kentucky Lake Dam. When I called him to set things up and asked him how he was, he answered “not fit to kill” (meaning not worth the price of the bullet it would take to kill him as he later explained to me). […]