 | The Appalachian Photographs of Earl Palmer Subjects: Appalachian Region Southern -- Description and travel -- Views; Appalachian Region Southern -- Social life and customs -- Pictorial works; Mountain whites (Southern States) -- Pictorial works; Palmer Earl 1905-; For more than fifty years mountain-born Earl Palmer traveled the Southern Appalachians with his camera, recording his personal vision of the mountain people and their heritage. Over these year he created, in several thousand photographs, a distinctive body of work that affirms a traditional image of Appalachia--a region of great natural beauty inhabited by a self-sufficient people whose lives are notable for simplicity and harmony. For this book, Jean Haskell Speer has selected more than 120 representative photographs from Palmer's collection and has written a biographical and critical commentary based on extensive interviews with the photographer. Palmer's photographs, Speer argues, are significant cultural statements that depict not so much a geographical region as a particular idea of Appalachia. Jean Haskell Speer is emerita director of the Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. |
