Autumn fern
Mountain dulcimer
Tish Westman, who with husband Greg builds and plays some beautiful instruments, plays the mountain dulcimer in the summer of 2009 at The BrazenHead Inn with their group Psaltrio.
Frozen music
Stairway at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, November 2008
The poster was conceived as one of a series of promotional pieces for Gorby's Music in South Charleston, West Virginia.
Johnny Cash
Charles Town, West Virginia, summer of 1984
I was nervous and conducted a lousy interview, though he did his best to put me at ease. This picture redeemed me, maybe.
Insight
Late afternoon sun refracted through cut glass onto a hand-carved table leg in Charleston, West Virginia
Awaiting the Ferry
Waiting for the Killimer-Tarbert ferry on the Shannon Estuary, southwestern Ireland, 2001
Grandiloquence
Ceiling detail at Muckross House, near Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland
Muckross was designed by the brilliant Scottish architect William Burn for Henry Arthur Herbert and his wife, Mary Balfour Herbert. Construction began in 1839 and ended in 1843.
The potato blight struck in 1845, and the official British response throughout the resulting crisis was tragically inadequate. By 1847, in Killarney alone, about 10,000 starving people were being served by a single soup kitchen as good Irish oats and grain were shipped out to feed England. By that time, Mrs. Herbert and their four children had relocated to London for the duration of the famine.
Queen Victoria herself visited Muckross in 1861, and the preparations for her visit are thought to be partly responsible for the ensuing insolvency of the estate — now a part of Killarney National Park.
You can read more history of the famine years if you like. Thanks also to Professor Beverly King of Massachusetts for suggesting this excellent resource on Irish history. And if you already know enough about suffering, you may want a dose of hope for humanity instead.
Why include historical resources in a collection of my photographs? If an image teaches us something about ourselves, and about humanity, it's more than a photograph.
