Shelby Lee Adams
Shelby Lee Adams was born in Kentucky in 1950. He grewv up in Appalachia at a time when the region’s poverty was often the subject of caricatured reporting. Adams and his family deplore this. At the Cleveland Institute of Art he discovered the Farm Security Administration’s archives on the Great Depression. This sparked the idea of documentary work with rural families in his home community, alongside his magazine commissions and university lectures.> Read more
Between 1974 and 2010, he returned every summer to this land of coal mines and small-scale farming, which he criss crossed with his lens. «For me, the ‘hollers’ [Appalachian valleys] are an autobiographical place through which I can reconnect with my childhood,» he explains. It’s where my friends and family are, and the culture I grew up in. In short, it’s a place I’ve always wanted to leave, but where I’ve always wanted to come back to recharge my batteries.
His work received early institutional recognition in the form of grants, including two from the National Endowment for the Arts (in 1978 and 1992). His images have also found their way into the collections of prestigious institutions such as MoMA in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
