2nd Student Artists' Book Contest 2016
Preview
Creation Date
2015
Description
Graduate student, year of graduation 2016. Major: Photography. Class: Antique + Alternative Processes (Photo) thesis mentor. Faculty: Anna Strickland, Steve Smith.
Materials + Techniques
Hand sewn book of van dyke prints
Student Narrative
Rim Road evokes the liminal space and physical profession of Everard Hall. Everard, 71, has been hand digging and filling graves since he was 19. He is meticulous and takes pride in his craft. He even has plans to dig his own grave. For more than three years, I have been returning to rural Maine to live and work alongside Everard. Our time together--digging, making photographs, and talking--explores my ongoing interest in tombstones as a visual relief across the landscape to mark relationships we cannot access, and his work gathering stories, or really the end of stories of everyone in the small towns where he digs. The manual tradition of grave digging in the United States will disappear with him and, with it, a consideration of death that is open and personal. In this book, I use the rich browns of the van dyke process to locate these images within the colors of dirt. The photographs move us through Everard's personal environment, a place where death is an accepted part of everyday life.