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 trips back since then; none specifically photographic.

It was 12 days after the mass shooting at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston SC.  Race was on my mind.  I envisioned Owensboro as more “South” than Louisville.  What would I encounter there?

Driving into Owensboro, I looked for a parking place.  The Daviess County Courthouse was surrounded with American flags.  I found a parking spot behind the courthouse next to the Confederate Soldier’s monument.  What was I going to find in Owensboro?

I met with the Marshall. He introduced me to federal District Judge Joseph McKinley.  McKinley was nominated to his position by Senator Wendell Ford. Ford had long wanted a federal district court in Owensboro.  There had been two previous judges, but they both moved to Louisville rather than stay in Owensboro.  McKinley said the only reason Ford nominated him was because he knew he’d stay in Owensboro.  Case proven.

Owensboro was getting ready for the 4^th of July weekend, hence the flags around the courthouse.  There were fireworks stands everywhere, my favorite was on US 60, east of downtown: a large tent with a box truck parked next to it and portalets.  The salespeople would sleep in the tent all night, to make sure no one stole their stock.  They had a generator to power their TV.  Customers appeared sporadically.  In between time some of the salespeople amused themselves by jumping their trick bicycles over obstacles.

Downstream from downtown is the Owensboro Riverport, a major barge transshipment facility.    Driving by, I’m struck by the massive stockpile of aluminum ingots.  In storage at Owensboro Riverport is the largest assemblage of publicly traded aluminum in the United States.  The stored aluminum comes from all over the world and is traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange and the London Metal Exchange.  At the onset of the great recession, a number of investment banks, with Goldman Sachs being the most prominent, started hoarding aluminum by warehousing it in “stealth” warehouses; warehouses that had no transparency as to their content.  Goldman succeeded in cornering and holding 3% of the global aluminum stocks.  As the price rose, public warehouses controlled by the London Metal Exchange also began tightening their outflow.  All of this drove the price of aluminum up 300%.  At the time of my visit, the price was back in the normal range.  If the spigot were to be turned off again, the stockpiles would be larger and the price would rise again.

One evening I rode my bicycle downstream from the Riverport on a road threading itself between huge agricultural fields.  At my turnaround point I came upon a beautiful tobacco barn, unusual in that it had been painted red.  I photographed it with my pocket camera, and made a mental note to come back with a larger camera and rephotograph it.  

The next morning I came out with my full camera load and photographed tobacco fields.  On my way to the barn I wanted to photograph, I saw a number of people working in another field.  I went to that site and found a crew of Hispanic guest workers harvesting cucumbers.  It was an interesting procedure.  A tractor drove down a lane between two fields.  The tractor was towing a wagon on which were huge bins.  On either side of the tractor were perpendicular lines of laborers picking cucumbers and putting them into dry wall buckets.  When their buckets were filled, they would stand up and each worker would relay his bucket to the next worker, who would then pass it on until it reached the tractor and was loaded into the bin.  The bin loader would dump the cucumbers into the bin then toss the bucket back to the line of workers, who in turn, would relay the bucket back to the original picker.

The cucumber field is one of several thousand acres of leased agricultural land.  The tractor driver is the teenage nephew of the farmer who leases all the land.  His uncle farms tobacco, soybeans, corn, cucumbers and other garden crops.  He employs his laborers year round.  They live in off site housing, and few speak English. 

In 1977 there was a dynamic Owensboro city seal painted on the side of a building.  I arranged for the mayor and city council members to meet me one afternoon and have their portrait made in front of the mural.  The mural faced west, and the sun was glaring into the mayor and city council members’ eyes.  Waiting for me to ask them to pose, everyone had their hands up on their foreheads, shielding their eyes.  That turned out to be the picture.  On this trip, I wanted to restage that photograph.  The original mural is gone, but there is a similar full building glass mural with a map of Kentucky.  I met with the mayor, Ron Payne, to arrange to do the photograph on Friday evening after he and the council members had cut the ribbon on a new “pier” section of the Owensboro Riverwalk.

The ribbon cutting was to take place at 5:00.  At 4:00 the clouds darkened.  At 4:30 it was storming.  The band set up on the wharf withdrew to the coverage of the Convention Center.  The Mayor and City Commission members were dutifully assembled to cut the ribbon, hoping the rain would abate.  The rain didn’t abate, so they walked out on the wharf and cut the ribbon in the rain.

I restaged the Mayor and City Council (now City Commissioner) photo inside the Owensboro Convention Center.  It would have been much better outside with no rain and the glass mural.

Pam Smith-Wright is a City Commissioner.  Pam is vivacious and a real Owensboro booster.  She was an Owensboro high school track star and was elected as the first African American City Commissioner.  Pam was also the first woman to serve as Mayor Pro Tem of Owensboro.  I photographed Pam and fellow Commissioner Deborah May Nunley together.  

I spent the 4^th of July at Diamond Lake Resort.  Diamond Lake is owned by Brian and Laurie Smith.  Brian was a police officer in southern California, looking for a change of venue.  He found Diamond Lake on the internet, visited and bought it.  What a change of scene:  from LA to rural Daviess County Kentucky.  Brian has gone from being a police officer to a camp counselor and activity director.  Diamond Lake consists of 157 acres, 270 RV campsites, multiple lakes, go cart tracks, bumper boats, music theater, restaurant, disc golf course, motel and cottages.  Many people park their trailer or RV there for the summer and come to Diamond Lake for the weekend or extended vacations.  A number of guests also have golf carts, which is the preferred method of transportation around Diamond Lake.

Brian Smith shines on the 4^th.  It’s his day.  The activities started with a pie-eating contest.  There were a number of contestants who had competed in previous years who knew the secret of flipping the pie out of its pie pan and eating it off the table covering.

The Chicken Chucking Competition followed the pie-eating contest.  For this event, raw plucked chicken carcasses are placed in a washtub full of cooking oil. Contestants come up singly to the washtub and pick up an oil soaked chicken.  The contestant carries the chicken to a starting line, and hurls the chicken as far as she can out onto a field that has hashmarks every 5 yards.  The contestants were divided into groups:  kids under 12, adult men and adult women.  Spectators lined the field in their golf carts.

A balloon toss followed the chicken chucking.  Brian, the master of ceremonies, thoroughly enjoyed MC’ing all of the events.  And, all of the contestants seemed to love Brian.

I left Diamond Lake and went upstream on the Ohio to take pictures of the William Natcher Bridge northeast of Owensboro crossing to Rockport Indiana.  I liked the juxtaposition of the farm fields, modern bridge structure and state of the art American Electric Power plant in the background.

Owensboro has made a significant investment in its waterfront, constructing a ¾ mile long ribbon park, Smothers Park.  The 4^th promised entertainment by the Owensboro Symphony, other bands, and fireworks.  My guess is that there were 20-30,000 people assembled on the waterfront.  I spent my time cruising the crowd, taking pictures of whatever caught my eye.  I was struck at the racial makeup of the crowd.  If I had been at Waterfront Park in Louisville I would have seen large clusters of African Americans together, and similarly large clusters of white people together.  In Owensboro it was different.  African Americans and Latinos were mixed in with white groups.  Sometimes they were independent, but most often the groups were racially mixed.  I saw a number of inter-racial couples, many with children.  These are things I would not have seen forty years ago.

As the evening progressed, I made my way to the Convention Center pier to photograph the fireworks.  There, I encountered City Commissioners Pam Smith-Wright and Jeff Sanford.  I told Pam of my observations on racial mixing, and asked her what she thought the difference was between Owensboro and Louisville.  Her response was that the African American population is small, 5%.  By being such a small minority African Americans and whites were more inclined to mix.  

I told Pam that I planned to photograph Blessed Sacrament Chapel, a predominantly African American Catholic Church on Sunday, the next day.  Jeff, who is white, piped in that Blessed Sacrament was his church.

On Sunday I showed up at Blessed Sacrament Chapel.  It’s a small church.  The story I heard was that it was traditionally the Catholic African American church, then the bishop closed it because the congregation was too small.  The African American community petitioned the bishop and got it reopened.

The interior of the church has pictures of black saints, most notably St. Martin de Porres.  The congregation streams in.  I’m struck by the racial makeup of the congregation . . . it’s 70% white.  The priest is an East Indian, Father Suneeesh Mathew.  The choir has 5-6 people, all African American.  The service starts with a hymn,  “Jesus loves me that I know, because the Bible tells me so.”  A hymn I have never heard sung in a Catholic Church.  At one point there is an anointing of the sick.  The priest goes out into the congregation and anoints the foreheads of those who have signaled they want to be healed.  A nurse accompanies the priest and lays her hands on the petitioner.  Again, this is something I have never seen in a Catholic church.  A parishioner reads the Gospel.  He reads it in the manner of a gospel preacher . . . again, not the Catholic I knew.  This is a church that combines various traditions, making for a very meaningful service.

Communion happens, and the congregants stream to the altar.  Black hands giving communion to white worshipers.  How things have changed.  Sunday morning has been called the most segregated time in America.  Here in Owensboro it was the opposite.

I leave Owensboro, driving back to Louisville, thinking on what I have experienced.  I drove into Owensboro expecting the Old South.  I left Owensboro having seen the New South.

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.

I began my photographic journey by driving the Western Kentucky Parkway and I-69 to Princeton. At Princeton I got on US 62 headed east toward Dawson Springs. About 10 miles outside of Dawson Springs in Caldwell County, I saw people clearing tree debris out of the highway. I pulled my car behind their truck and asked a  man who appeared to be Mennonite if I could photograph what they were doing. “Sure, “ he replied. I asked if he was a Mennonite, and he said, ”I used to be Amish, now I guess you could say I’m a Christian.”

I went back to my car to get my camera and a man came up to me and told me I was on private property. He asked what I was doing, I told him, and he replied, “I think there’s enough of this already, we don’t need any more of what you’re doing.”

I drove off without having taken any pictures. A good start for the day. It made me a bit gun-shy. I remembered a conversation I’d had earlier that morning with Michael Swensen who was photographing in devastated Mayfield. I’d asked him about his reception, and he responded that everyone was fine with him, “this is Kentucky.”

I continued driving east on US 62. I came upon a hilltop that had been heavily hit, and saw what appeared to be a food prep station set up under a tarp. I pulled in, introduce myself, and asked if I could photograph. This was a family. They had all moved from Colorado and bought about 12 acres, house and barn. Land was too expensive in Colorado, so they began looking in Tennessee and southern Kentucky. Every time they found something they wanted it sold. Properties were selling in days. The property they bought had been under contract to a man from New Jersey. When he saw it, he decided that he was not able to take care of that much land. The real estate agent contacted the Colorado family, and they bought it immediately. They moved in in January of 2021. They brought their livestock with them:  horses, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks. A newly wed husband and wife in their 30s, her mom and his dad. Mom was living in the house and dad was living in his RV.

Then came the tornado. It blew the roof off much of their house, the barn disappeared and all the fencing was blown away. They lost their ducks and chickens. The pigs collectively made a new nest for themselves on the edge of the woods.  

I photographed an insurance adjuster who had come to assess the damage. He was a “disaster adjuster” who traveled to various disaster sites on behalf of the insurance firms that hired him. This was his first stop in Kentucky. His day job is that he runs a ceramics studio in Ohio.

Inside the house I photographed the bride’s mother. She had a large suitcase sitting atop a huge four poster bed. There was no roof overhead. A fan and some drywall were hanging from what had been a ceiling. Mom was folding wet clothes and putting them in the suitcase to be transported to where they were staying, be removed then hung to dry. As I photographed her she told me that her husband had died of Covid not long before her move to Kentucky. A number of other relatives had died, too. She began to cry. I apologized for photographing her during this display of emotion, telling her that these photos really reveal what she and others had been going through. It was OK with her. She wants to buy the Kentucky book when it is on the market.

The family, assisted by a cousin who had come up from South Carolina to help, had constructed a new corral made from all the fencing they could scavenge. Inside the corral were their horses and goats, who get along very well. The pigs were free ranging. The pigs all have names and are pets. They come up to be petted. One likes to have his belly rubbed.

I continued east on US 62 passing through a National Guard checkpoint. Only residents are admitted to the town. My press pass sufficed.

There’s devastation on both sides of the roads with electric line crews working to reestablish electric power to the city.

On the east side of town, on the north side of the road it looks like Hiroshima after the atom bomb. I park my car, take out my camera and start walking. People are pulling salvageable items out of homes that are partially standing. If there is no longer a home standing, they’re combing the debris field to see if they can find anything of value.

The debris field is like a river that flows in the direction of the tornado’s wind when it struck. I stood beneath a small hill. The debris field was full of wood part pieces from the destroyed homes. All of the wood was pointed in the same direction as the wind that dislodged it. Items that flew better lodged in the trees that had not been totally knocked over; most of their tops were gone. The trees, or wooded areas were full of sheet metal, insulation, drywall, and whatever could be blown into them.  

People tell me their stories of what happened and how they survived. “We hid in the bathroom underneath the stairwell”, this from a family whose house was still partially there. “We went into the basement,” a lifesaver for those who had houses with basements.

I photograph an elderly couple who are putting jars of preserves in bins. The preserves are labeled by the year they were canned. They are being salvaged from the basement. The house is no longer there, just the basement and the concrete floor for the garage that no longer exists. The man told me that when they got the tornado alert they went into the basement. “Other people said the tornado sounded like a freight train. Our basement is so well insulated that we didn’t hear anything like that. I heard what sounded like a big bump and that was all. We figured that it was over so we came up from the basement and the house was gone.”

Driving through town I pass the Beshear Funeral Home. Our past governor, Steve Beshear’s father owned the funeral home. Two miles south of town is Beshear Lake.

Beyond the funeral Home I come across police vehicles from neighboring Morganfield. They are blocking a street. Across the street sitting on the steps of a partially damaged home is a man dressed as Santa Claus. He’s assisted by a mom and daughter dressed as elves. They’re passing out toys to whomever comes by, all donated by the citizens of Morganfield and the Morganfield police department.

Later in the day I come across a man in a red pickup truck. I asked him where he’s staying, and he said, “Follow me.” I follow him down narrow lanes that have been cleared of debris (mostly tree falls). We come to the top of a hill, and park on his lot near the remains of his house. Next to the lot are two bulldozers and other pieces of heavy equipment. He tells me that his building that housed the equipment blew away, as did a good portion of the house. He was living in the house with his 102-year-old mother. “When the tornado came, I laid my mother in the corner of the house (which is still standing), I laid on top of her and the dog came over and laid with us.” They all survived. I asked if I could photograph him with his house. “I hope you don’t mind the Trump flag?” I assured him that it was OK. He told me that the flag had blown off in the tornado. He found it in the refuse and put it back up.

He tells me that he used his bulldozers to clear the roads. He’d been a heavy equipment operator on strip mines before he retired. He likes heavy equipment, and that’s why he owns the dozers.

He leads me into town. On the north side of the street in downtown Dawson Springs is a man cooking on the sidewalk. There’s a handmade sign reading “Free Food.” Next to that is another sign reading “Not Need Clothes.” The man is a pastor of a neighboring community church. He’s working with a local Dawson Springs Pastor. Not only are they providing free food, but also clothing and are sheltering 30 people. I go inside their building. It’s dimly lit and stacked with food and clothing for distribution.

A caravan of vehicles drives through town pulling trailers from Sheep Dog Impact Assistance. This is a group of veterans and other first responders who provide disaster assistance amongst other services to their members.

Community outpouring of aid is everywhere. People assisting in cleanup. Several families from a neighboring community are standing by the side of the road giving away “Free Pork Chop Dinners.” The families had gotten together and decided to prepare meals. The pork chop dinners were in big zip lock bags handed out to passers-by. 

It’s after sunset and I’m leaving town (there’s a 6 pm curfew in effect) and I see a group of Mennonites in what appears to be a food assembly line. I stop to photograph. They’re assembling free meals. Sloppy Joes being the main course. They come from the neighboring community of Crofton. There are four Mennonite churches in Crofton serving about 80 families. I ask one of the men where the money comes from to pay for the food they’re giving away. He tells me it comes from the local parishioners. This moves me. I ask if I can write a check? “We’re not asking for money,” he responds. I tell him that if it’s coming from their pockets to feed people, I’d like to help. I write a check to his church, which will be used for food distribution.

Media presence is notable. During the course of the day I’d run into a videographer and reporter from BBC. Later in the day I encountered several regional TV reporters. At the end of the day, I speak with a woman, Ms. Patel, who is a reporter for Spectrum News. She’s covering the Mennonites. She does all her reportage with an iphone. Shooting video, and her own on-camera commentary by pointing the iphone at herself. The next day I see her on TV while waiting for my appointment in the dentist’s office.

Night has fallen, curfew is about to take effect. I travel east on US 62, and find the road blocked. All traffic is diverted to SR 109 north.

It’s a long drive back to Louisville.  

I think about Dawson Spring, Mayfield and the other communities that have been severely damaged by this storm. Build back? Is that the question? Many of these rural communities have seen significant loss of both people and the industries that supported the towns. Will they come back?

Ted Wathen
Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project
December 14, 2021

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 Williams. The students were all split into two rooms to fit social distancing protocol. All students wore masks and sat a couple feet apart. This day they were learning to separate milk proteins and the class was made up mostly of pre-med majors. I found myself chatting with the graduate student instructor named “ “ who was originally from Nigeria. Dr. Williams explained to me that “ “ father got stuck in Bowling Green with his daughter and is unable to return to his home country due to US travel bans.  I felt sympathy for “ “ having to pursue her graduate studies at such an unprecedented time in U.S. history. I thought about how much her father must miss her mother. We chatted about Nigeria’s weather, how she’s adjusted to her time here, but we had trouble communicating through our masks. At one point Dr. Williams remarked that she expected the school to be shutting down within a couple of weeks. Bowling Green had been seeing an uptick in COVID-19 cases since school started back. There have been reports of frat and sorority parties and other students not following safety protocol. My best friend, whom I’m staying with and who is also a student at WKU, has told me several times how nervous she feels being around other students. Walking back to my car, I noticed how empty campus felt. It was nothing like my time in 2011-2015. I can’t imagine being a college student during this time. As I walked nearby Park Street, just a block from one of my old college apartments, I saw an electrical box tagged with “F*ck the KKK.” It was a symbol that spoke to me amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests and increasing racial tension in our country. Given how segregated the college campus felt during my time there, I felt the need to take a photo of it. 

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 town to be in. I spent time there in the 70’s on the original Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project, and subsequently visited while doing commercial work, and on another occasion while riding a bicycle cross Kentucky. I like Russellville.

Russellville has a town square. In the square is a large monument dedicated to Confederate soldiers, a smaller granite monument commemorating the Sovereignty Convention held in Russellville in 1861. At that convention, representatives of 68 counties met and “BY THE ANCIENT RIGHT OF SELF DETERMINATION AND REVOLUTION, SET UP A NEWLY CONSTITUTED STATED OF KENTUCKY . . . UNDER THIS NEW REGIME THE SOVEREIGNTY OF OUR PEOPLE FOUND A MEDIUM OF EXPRESSION FOR SYMPATHY WITH THE SOUTHERN CAUSE IN WHICH THERE COULD BE NO STIGMA OF TREASON.” So reads the monument. There is also a Kentucky State historical plaque commemorating that event.

The town square is bisected by a paved walkway. On the other side of the walkway from the Confederate memorials is another state historical plaque commemorating Alice Allison Dunnigan, the first African-American woman to gain press credentials for both houses of Congress and the White House. Alice was also a civil rights activist and served on presidential commissions during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.  Ms. Dunigan is memorialized with a bronze statue at the Struggles for Emancipation and Equality in Kentucky museum sited on a former plantation homesite 6 blocks from the town square monuments.

Logan county had the second highest number of lynchings in of any county in Kentucky. John Rhodes, a lawyer who defended a black man charged with murder in 1908, stated, “It was as easy to raise a (lynch) mob in Logan County in those days as to drop a hat . . .” Rhodes client was spirited away from the mob, so the mob lynched four other black men instead.

Kentucky is a land of contrasts. On one hand we have a town square honoring the town’s confederate history, and six blocks away there is an emerging museum honoring African-American contributions to our culture. 

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 a lot looser than the McDonalds I got access to, but they were both interesting places and I felt a lot of empathy for the workers in both.

I was pretty amazed at the food people were ordering at Sonic especially – lots of huge containers of surgery shakes drizzled with caramel, various sweet toppings, and finished with a cherry. The burger and fries seemed to be the healthy option for more responsible eaters.

I took some prints back to the Sonic to give to the people I had photographed. This girl, who had been expressionless and a little dour when I was shooting the others, had put on this beautiful smile when I photographed her. When I came inside to find her and show her the print I had brought her, she looked at me as if I were a child molester. This hurt my feelings, as I had gone to some trouble to make the prints and bring them, and all I really wanted was that same smile and a “thank you.” I thought a lot about what kind of life she’s had to make her react the way she did.

 

“We’renot bad people, we’re just strange people, you know what I mean?”

Quote from a tobacco farmer in far western Marshall County who let me photograph his Mexican workers. 

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. I drove to where the town was supposed to be and didn’t find it. I circled back, no town, then back the other way. The town of Gus is extinct. I had to call my son and tell him he no longer exists.

From Gus, I made my way to Lake Malone, still in Muhlenberg County. I’m on State Road 973, a narrow two lane road, on the north side of the lake, and the traffic is halted. There are three cars stopped in front of me. In front of them is a stove in the middle of the road. Further down the road are a number of police vehicles. There’s a shirtless man in the ditch next to the police vehicles. He is handcuffed with his arms behind his back. He periodically writhes on the ground. Two officers are entering the scrub land on the right side of the road with dogs. Rifles are out.

I grab my camera and press pass and go up to the scenes. I’m photographing the handcuffed man and the police vehicles on the road above him.

“Whatchu wanna take my picture for?”

“I’m doing a documentary on Kentucky. I’m with the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project.”

“You got any meth?”

That was the last of our exchange. He continued to periodically writhe on the ground, to avoid letting me see his face.

The K-9 cops came back with no other suspects. The rifles were put away. And a wrecker was engaged to pull up the stove, and other items that had fallen off the handcuffed man’s trailer as he was being chased by the police.

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) and his approach to his work and people. This was shortly after Ferguson and several other police shootings, but I watched Kelly defuse and calm potentially violent situations. “I want you to just go inside and don’t come out until tomorrow morning” he said to one very loud and drunken man at the Motel 6 who seemed to be doing everything he possibly could to get himself arrested. Being with Kelly was re-affirming though he said he’d never want his son to become a police officer.

Later on during my second trip to Paducah, I get a call from Jody Cash who tells me, in his soft, almost feminine voice (during my shift with him a phone caller kept referring to him as “Ma’m”) that he’s a State Police Officer and is willing to let me do a “ride-along” with him. We set this up, and I meet him at 8 am that Friday at the State Police Post outside Mayfield.  During his shift he’s the only officer covering 3 counties – McCracken,  Ballard, and Carlisle. Jody has always had a religious calling and began preaching when he was 16. At some point though, he realized that being a preacher wasn’t the right path for him and he began a career in law enforcement. He sees his religious calling as being better fulfilled as a police officer – this might seem like a contradiction in terms but as I spent the day – an uneventful one – with him, I could see he meant it in the way he treated the people he encountered. He had an air of calm about him, smiled a lot, laughed a lot, showed intuitive people skills and was a good judge of character. It’s obvious he loves what he does and is comfortable with who he is. He told me most cops really don’t like having passengers, but he likes the company. At one point he asked me if I was cold, explaining the he wears a bullet proof vest at all times and it’s hot, so he cranks up the AC in his car. As one of his fellow officers said to him once “I’d rather sweat than bleed.” His car (a Dodge Charger) is really his office, with weapons, phone, computer, printer (traffic tickets on the spot), “desk” light, etc. He showed considerable skill at typing in license numbers while driving at high speed. He tells me in some detail about the one time he had to kill someone. Any time a state officer kills someone they are required to take at least 2 weeks off – Jody took 3. He recounts how another officer killed someone and could never returned to the force. He calls himself a “shit magnet” because he feels like when something happens, he’s always close by. He doesn’t pull people over for speeding unless the are going at least 10 mph over the limit on smaller roads, and 15 over on highways –- very generous I told him. He tells me how he questions people to see if they are lying.  He recounts the following exchange with a suspected drug dealer:  “Do you live here?” “No.” “Did you spend last night here?” “Yes.” “Was last night the only night you’ve spent here?” “Yes sir, last night was the only night I’ve ever spent here.” Then he bursts out laughing and says “if only you knew how long I’ve been watching you.” Jody is an amazing man, and like Kelly, belies the myth of corrupt and abusive cops.

Juneteenth.  June 19, 2020. Demonstrators in Louisville march to both commemorate the day and to call out the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and a list of others who had been killed by the police. The march left Liberty Square and proceeded to the site of  Roots 101 African American Museum on West Main Street, Museum Row.

The museum’s founder, Lamont Collins, came out to speak. He told the story of the Museum, why it needed to be, and asked the marchers to help with its creation. Then he brought out artifacts that will be on display at the museum: a set of shackles with chains, and a slave collar. I had never seen anything so horrific as that slave collar. The collar was put around an enslaved person’s neck, with the purpose of impeding, or making it impossible to escape. You couldn’t run and hide if that was locked on your neck.

Days later I made contact with Mr. Collins and told him I’d like to photograph him with the slave collar. He readily agreed.

Several years ago, Mr. Collins was listening to NPR and heard a story about Oran Z. Belgrave, a man in California who had a museum filled with African American artifacts. Urban renewal took the museum, and the man placed his entire collection in 12 shipping containers that he stored in the Mojave Desert. Lamont heard the story and called the Mr. Belgrave. Lamont told him that he had always wanted to start an African American museum, and that he would take the collector’s collection and start a museum in Louisville.  On the phone, Mr. Belgrave began crying and told Lamont that this was the answer to his prayers.

Mr. Collins has been a collector since he was 10. His father owned a construction company and his mother worked in the Federal Building in Louisville. She witnessed men coming in for their draft physicals during the 60s. Mrs. Collins sought out Louisville’s athletes reporting for their physicals:  Wesley Unseld, Cassius Clay, and got their autographs. This was the start of Mr. Collins’ collection.

Over the years he collected more and more, always housed in his home. He felt it was his mission to explain the African American story to his visitors. To tell “the other half of the story.” Items in his personal collection became the talking points for the African American experience.

Lamont’s phone call to Mr. Belgrave was a godsend for both. Lamont started Roots 101 a year ago, housed in three floors on West Main Street. The museum’s planned opening this year has been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

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. These golden messengers from the past remind me of my own intentions in the present. As a member of the KDPP team, it is my great honor to record our present in order to contribute to this canon of visual history that I so revere. It is this very conviction that keeps me going.

Some days are slow, and it’s just going to be that way. This photographic art is a kind of magic that requires collaboration with the world and those who inhabit it. Serendipity comes in fleeting dashes, restoring faith and generating excitement, but it also gives way to the longer pause: those moments when everyone thinks you are a DEA agent and you feel ill-equipped to convince them otherwise because the truth – well, the truth simply isn’t as convincing. The truth is that I just really like to take pictures, more than anything in the world. Let’s face it: it’s hardly competes as a story. 

My first day of work reminded me of all that, but it also revealed new realities, namely how deeply entrenched the opioid epidemic is in rural Kentucky. It seemed that there could be no greater threat, presumed or otherwise, than a DEA agent in the community of Sawyer. Before long, locals opened up to me, explaining rather frankly how drugs have remodeled the landscape of their home. Pills have been engineered as part of the new social fabric, and it hardly ends there.

I myself have no thoughts or notions as to how this might be resolved. That’s not my role. All I have are observations. And I wish for nothing more than to keep bearing witness, to continue fixing images for the future. It is my belief that the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project will constitute a powerful archive, one that will inform the ages. My greatest, most powerful response to all those questions that seem unanswerable now is to keep working. 

For more about Rachel, go to rachelboillot.com

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.

Construction started on the Davis Monument in 1917 and was completed in 1924.  This was during the Lost Cause movement, the reinvention of the Confederacy as the protector of states’ rights, southern virtues, and the nobility of the antebellum South. Concurrently, Confederate statuary was erected throughout the South.  To the Lost Cause, slavery was a just, biblically sanctioned institution presided over by chivalrous masters.

The Lost Cause did its best to ignore that the founding principle of the Confederacy was the defense of slavery and the economy that it supported.  Figures of the Confederacy were turned into saints. 

History tells us that Davis partnered with his brother on a plantation in Mississippi and owned 113 slaves in 1860. He had served in the Mexican American War, was a US Congressman, Senator and Secretary of War.  As a Senator and Secretary of War he advocated the annexation of northeast Mexico and Cuba to “increase the number of slaveholding constituencies.”  Elected president of the Confederacy, Davis was ineffective at coordinating the Confederate states’ generals, did not identify with the common people and failed to harness Confederate nationalism. 

Kentucky just removed the Jefferson Davis statue from the State Capitol Building, relocating one element of the Lost Cause to the Jefferson Davis Monument in Fairview, where the Lost Cause remains visible from miles away.

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.  Pine Mountain has been blessed with the absence of coal, unlike the surrounding mountains and Cumberland Plateau.  The only extractions from Pine Mountain have been timber and several limestone quarries.  For the most part, it is a natural seemingly unexploited ridge.

Leaving Pine Mountain I traveled north in Harlan County on SR 221.  The road rises from the valley ascending a ridge.  Topping out the ridge there are two black bears playing in the middle of the road.  They hear my car and scamper into the woods.  I turn into a gravel-mining road adjacent to the woods and stop my car.  One of the bears has stopped and is looking through the trees to see what I’m going to do.  I continue on the mining road until it does a rocky descent, turn around and head back to SR 221.  No bears to be seen.

Kentucky counties are separated by natural boundaries:  creeks, rivers, ridge tops, mountains.  Folklore has it that counties were originally set up so that one could ride by horseback to the county seat in a day.  I’m sure that there’s some truth to that. The county line between Harlan and Leslie is the crest of the ridge.

The road descends into Leslie County.  I see the turnoff for Leatherwood, and proceed northward to Yeadiss.  North of Yeadiss there’s a gradual rise then as the road descends I see what appears to be a school or a minimum security prison in the valley below.  First impressions.  It’s a school, it has playing fields.  I think about taking a picture from the elevated point I’m on.  A photo that would show how the school sits in the valley with the mountains rising all around it.  I take the easy way out and rationalize myself out of stopping for the photo, and drive on.  

I pass the school.  The valley is narrow; the school’s parking lot hugs the road, and is separated from the road by a chain link fence.  The links of the fence have been embroidered with vinyl making a sign reading  “WOLVERINES DON’T DO DRUGS”.  This is the photograph to be made.

Now to find a place to park my car.  I don’t want it in the school’s parking lot, because it might appear in one of my pictures.  I drive back south to where I saw the school originally and find a flat spot on the side of the road to park.  I take out my camera and take the original photo I’d thought about taking, then walk down the road toward the school. The school grounds are on the left as I walk.  On the right is a steep hill with two houses about 70-80 feet up the embankment.  I can see a Camaro parked in the carport of the house closest to the school.  There’s a man with a bandana on his head moving about near that house and Camaro.

Further down the road also in the right side embankment are the remains of a Chevy Biscayne.  I think about making a photo there, but proceed on to my destination.  

The school is the Hayes Lewis Elementary School.  The “WOLVERINES DON’T DO DRUGS” signage extends at least 50 feet opposite of the main entrance to the school.  It also has a cartoon likeness of a wolverine.  Drugs are a serious problem in Kentucky, and more so in Appalachia.  The school board is trying to be preemptive in their messaging.  Get them while they’re young.  I saw a similar message on another school in Leslie County.

I take my pictures, then start walking back to my car.  I eye the embedded Biscayne, and decide there really isn’t a picture there, and continue my walk back to my car.

Once at my car the man I’d seen up the hillside near the Camaro came riding down toward me on his 4 wheeler.  

I figured that I was probably parked on his property.  I greeted him and told him was taking photographs of the school, and this was the only place I could find to park.  He was quite nice, and said that he thought I might be taking pictures of the property below his house.  It seems that he and his father are in a legal dispute with his aunt, who claims the land immediately below his house is hers.  She wants to excavate it and put in another house.  The land is so steep that if she excavates, his house will slide down the hill into hers.  I assure him that was only taking pictures of the school.

We start to talk.  He has a Marine Corps tattoo on one arm and a skull and crossed rifles on the other.  As we’re talking his father walks down from the other house . . . the one without the Camaro.  The father has a labored walk.  He comes to the 4 wheeler and we talk.  I tell him what I’m doing, making a documentary on our state.  I like the looks of the father and son and ask if I can take their pictures.  They’re fine with it and I commence working.

After I’ve finished the father, Joe Adams, says I should go up the hillside and take photos of the signage over the family graveyard.

We go up.  The graveyard is and excavated ledge in the hillside.  The entrance has an arched sign over the walkway reading, “Kenny Joe Adams Memorial Family Cemetery”.  Kenny is the only person buried in the cemetery.  They are awaiting his headstone that’s coming from Georgia.

Ronnie, the son tells me about his brother.  Kenny broke a lot of bones.  When he was 5 or 6 he rode his Bigwheel over the side of the hill and broke a leg.  Other bones were broken playing football.  In his 20’s, weighing 400 pounds, he jumped off a fence and destroyed his knee.  Also in his 20’s he developed esophageal cancer.  The cancer treatments left him with a damaged esophagus, and he was prone to choking.

Last year, in a restaurant, he choked on a bacon cheeseburger.  He went into the restroom attempting to cough it up, and burst his esophagus.  Ronnie was taken to the hospital and eventually died of sepsis.

Kenny’s grave is raised concrete, awaiting its headstone from Georgia.  It’s surrounded by plastic floral displays and solar powered lights.  It’s lit up at night.

Ronnie says he goes to his brother’s grave almost every night and talks to him.  “I tell him I know he’s in a better place, and I hope they gave him a new body.”

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). He’s a gregarious and funny man, never with out a cigar in his mouth.  He smokes Backwoods cigars which are (according to their website) “a popular domestic machine-made cigar. Not commonly smoked by those who are seeking high-end premiums, the Backwoods are an infusion of natural and homogenized tobacco with additive flavoring that is aimed at smokers who are looking for more than just the taste of tobacco in their cigars.”  He calls them his “pollution filters” joking that they filter out all the air pollution before it can get to his lungs. Ronnie is tough and hard working, always busy. His resumé, if you can believe what he says, includes work on Hollywood movie sets rigging explosives, and a stint at Gilley’s bar in Texas as a “rodeo clown.” He’s been divorced 7 times and has numerous children both natural and adopted.  He sang me a song he wrote that begins:  “Livin’ on the river is a mighty good life, but it’s kind of hard to keep a  wife…” He’s been a fisherman all his life and tells me he was conceived in a fishing boat. His “office” is in a shed, and sports half a dozen or so deer heads hanging from unfinished particle board walls.  There’s a small refrigerator with a microwave balanced on top, boxes of fishing and hunting equipment, an old arm-chair, a small TV and various other forms of useful clutter. He fishes from a very beaten-up Jon boat, maybe 24 feet, pulled by an equally beaten up Ford box-truck with the box part removed so as to convert it to a very long flat bed. On the lake he fishes at night because daytime recreational boaters could get their boat motors tangled in the nets he uses.  If he fishes the Ohio River, he goes during daylight, as he does during the winter. What with all the loading of nets, gear, ice, and other stuff, we didn’t leave his office until after dark. His first mate as it were, is a 21 year old kid named “JD,” an unmarried father of 2, separated from the mother of his kids who got bored because he was working so much and met someone else on facebook. Like Ronnie, JD is a hard worker, with very good people skills, just out of rehab with at best a high school education.  He’d been fired from the fish processing plant recently but Ronnie told him not to worry about it and that he could just come work for him. We set our nets, a total of maybe 17, stringing 3 or 4 together at a time and floating them in an open box configuration. Then we motored back to shore and JD set out to gather drift wood and build a big fire while Ronnie set up a gas grill on the bow of the boat and cooked minute steaks he bought from the Dollar Store. These are served on cold hamburger buns. They taste quite good. They had brought a cot and a sleeping bag for me and I lay there for a long time looking at the stars and listening to the fire crackle and the sound of diesel engines roaring back and forth in the distance. It was cold, and I sleep fitfully but I’m happy to be there and can’t remember the last time I went to sleep looking at the stars. The alarm goes off at 2:30, we climb aboard and go out to collect our catch. All night long JD pulls the nets into the boat and Ronnie extracts the fish using a big hook, and then slides them into the big metal box at the stern of the boat. The fish are big (the ones we were catching averaged 15–20 lbs) strong and can be violent. Ronnie tells me he’d been hit by one that drove his dentures up into his gums and when it was all over he was bleeding out of his mouth, his nose and his ears. The night I was with them Ronnie took some hard blows to one of his feet and yelled in pain, but was soon back to work as if nothing had happened.  Periodically JD shovels chipped ice over the fish in the box.  The bottom of the boat was very soon covered with fish slime, blood and water. We didn’t finish until dawn.