Home
“The world is our home. It is also the
home of many, many other children, some of whom live in far-away lands. They
are our world brothers and sisters.”
—James
Agee
Cotton Tenants
"Thus men forgot that ALL Deities reside in the human breast."
—William Blake
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You Are The World
If one wants to see anything very clearly, without any effort and without any distortions, the mind must be quiet. If I want to see your face, if I want to listen to the the beauty of your voice, if I want to see what kind of person you are, my mind must be quiet and not chatter. If it is chattering and wondering all over the place, then I am unable to see either your beauty or your ugliness. So silence is necessary for such seeing, as night is necessary for the day.
J Krishnamurti
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Amanda Gail, 2004
[Scanned original 4x5 Polaroid]
“Every
journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going
on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence
man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust
and betraying them without remorse”.
Janet
Malcolm
“The
Journalist and the Murderer"
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Excerpt - Francis Bacon
Review Time Magazine – May 2009
How rare it is to see contemporary art that attempts, much
less achieves, what used to be called a tragic dimension. Irony you can find in
any gallery these days, as well as low comedy, puerile cool and enigma. But in
a time that has its share of suffering, where is the art that tries to strike
an equivalent note? What we have - almost no language for any more.
Richard
Lacayo
Truth
Today we are suspicious of “Truth,” because we recognize that what is called truth is often only a tool in the hands of those in power, and is often determined by their beliefs and tailored to their requirements.
Lionel Corbett
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We don’t see what we see, but what someone tells us to see.
Douglas Harding
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David Levi Strauss
The truth is, photography can only do a
couple of things really well. It can make visible the tracery of a relation,
beginning with the relation between the photographer and his or her subject,
and it can reflect on death. Neither of these effects is automatic, by any
means, but it is possible. One would think that, out of the millions of
photographs that have been made between people over the last 165 years, it
would have happened more often, but in fact it is exceedingly rare.
I guess that’s because real portraits
enact a contradiction: that each human being is unique and, at the same time,
alike. There is no such thing as a "typical person." People are very
different, one from another. But when you get down below the surface, to the skull,
we’re ultimately the same.
David Levi Strauss from writing on Robert Bergman.
The Brooklyn Rail
________________________________________Stenger's Cafe
Cinti. Ohio
John Stenger Jr. originally opened Stenger's café in 1934. The Café drew people from downtown Cinti, Ohio, in the Over the Rhine District. Many regulars were originally Appalachians who lived and worked in the area, often going back home to the mountains to visit." There were lawyers, judges, winos, locals, professors, city employees, all types mixed and got along patronizing Stenger’s Café'', Allyson Jacobs, City Beat, May, 1997.
Leo Sunderman, the owner since the 1950's encouraged me to set up my 5x7 camera on a tripod in the back-dining room and around the establishment mingling with folks with camera, a pair of studio lights and umbrellas. I would ask to photograph people I was interested in for free, giving them 4 X 5 Polaroids and making some photos for myself. Then living in Cincinnati, most Saturdays you would find me there from 1979 to 1981. During this time I learned a lot about the regular people of Cincinnati, there celebrations and disappointments while photograph them. Today Stenger's is gone and just a memory.
Cinti. Ohio
[Stenger's Cafe Series]
The Granite Man, 1979
Carrie, 1979
Patron of Stenger's Cafe, 82
Roberta, 1980
[Stenger's Cafe Series]
Eugene, 79
Stenger's Cafe
Lost Little Girl, 82
Stenger's Cafe
Duffy & Friend, 1982
Stenger's Cafe
Patron at Stenger's Cafe, 79
Couple at Stenger's Cafe, 82
Carrie and Pat, 82
Stenger's Cafe
Mother and Child, 83
Dishwasher, 82, Stenger's Cafe
Dishwasher, 79
Leo [owner] Stenger's Cafe, 79
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Vision
In a word, the believer is continuous, to his consciousness,
at any rate. With a wider self from which saving experiences flow in. Those who
have such experiences distinctly enough and often enough to live in the light
of them remain quite unmoved by criticism, from whatever quarter it may come.
They have had their vision and they know—that we inhabit an invisible spiritual
environment from which help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger
soul whose instruments we are.
William James
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Prayer
Her state of mind, her ecstasy of love, show that something has happened to her. And nothing greater can happen to a human being than that he is forgiven. For forgiveness means reconciliation in spite of estrangement; it means reunion in spite of hostility; it means acceptance of those who are unacceptable; and it means reception of those who are rejected. Forgiveness is unconditional; it is not forgiveness at all.
Paul Tillich
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On Seeing
In ancient China before an artist began to paint anything-a tree, for instance-he would sit down in front of it for days, months, years, it didn’t matter how long, until he was the tree. He did not identify himself with the tree but he was the tree. This means that there was no space between him and the tree, no space between the observer and the observed, no experiencer experiencing the beauty, the movement, the shadow, the depth of a leaf, The quality of color. He was totally the tree, and in that state only could he paint.
Krishnamurti
Freedom From the Known
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Donald Kuspit, “The End of Art”
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Scotland
In 2004 I traveled to Scotland, rented a car and drove around the northern coast for two weeks, photographing every day. I worked with a Hasselblad and Polaroid back with a pair of Quantum lights, stands and umbrellas. My ancestry is partly Scotts/Irish and I loved the people of Scotland. Some of the places visited; Glasgow, Inverness, Isle of Skye, Ullapool and Glenfarg.
Megen Fraser, age 11, Inverness - shire
James Summers
Rolein Watson
Old Couple in Scotland, 2004
Ian and Margaret MacDiarmid, Isle of Skye
Murdo Maclean, Ullapool
[Whaler]
Wilma Greer, Glasgow
Clifford Bruce, Ullapool Ross-shire, 2004
Ian and Margaret MacDiarmid, Isle of Skye
[Whaler]
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—Thomas Wolfe
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Middle East 1978
When the Middle East Peace Accord was being put together under President Jimmy Carter’s Administration, Kissinger, Begin, Sadat, and Carter were the news daily. In 1978 I was 28 years old and lived in Cinti. Ohio. I flew to NYC to find a press sponsor to assist me getting credentials to photography throughout the Middle East at a time of conflict. I interviewed with all the press agencies at that time. Black Star, an international news agency headed by Howard Chapnick sponsored my press credentials, so that I could travel to Israel’s Jerusalem, Cairo, Lebanon and Greece. My purpose was to photograph the people of the Middle East that were not the famous politicians but the real country people, like my mountain people back home, the farmers, religious people, fisherman, and common man. Working with my 4x5 view camera carried in a backpack I traveled photographing for several months. The scans here are just a small part of this work.
Three Egyptian Women, Cairo, 1978
[Dressed for Funeral]
Egyptian Woman in Cairo, 1978
[Kodachrome Transfer to digital, made 2016]
Bedouin Woman in Market, Cairo, 1978
Egyptian Man, 78
In the streets of Cairo, 78
[Shelby with guide]
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"If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it;
if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy."
Richard Grinker
"My people have always been those trapped in a corner. I can come to them with a voice they do not possess..."
William Eugene Smith
Circus Folks
1977 - 81
In 1977 while living in Cinti. Ohio, I saw a small traveling circus side show and asked the performers if I could photograph them. We made arrangements and scheduled times for me to photograph. Often as the hand bill illustrates their schedules can be hectic, with three shows a day and traveling for hours at night, caravan style. I worked then with a 5 x 7 Deardorff camera making 4x5 Polaroids and giving one to each subject. With one trip photographing in Upstate New York with the series ending in Pittsfield, Mass. where I settled and photographed the circus for the last time. My first subject was Anne Gibbon, a tattooed lady very famous in the circus world.
A close photography friend made the following observation. “The tattooed woman used the stage name Artoria Gibbons. I saw her in the late 1950’s at Hubert's Flea Circus on 42nd St. It was the sideshow in an arcade that Diane Arbus went to find subjects. I remembered that Anne said that her husband was a tattooist and did the work. This was almost shocking in the 50’s to see a completely tattooed woman. She was 23 in the anonymous PR photo and age 86 in Shelby’s 1977 photo.”
—John Wyatt
Author, Under MY Skin
This work has never been exhibited or published before.
March 2020
Shelby Lee Adams
Circus Schedule
Artoria Gibbons, PR photo at age 23.
Anne Gibbons, 77
Circus Performer, 1977
The Serious Clown, 77
The Happy Clown, 77
The Rubber Man, 77
The Sword Swallower, 77
The Apprentice, 77
The Two-Headed Cow, 77
Big Bruce, 77
Circus Showgirl, 77
The Lost Girl, 80
Circus Gal, 80
Tent Worker, 80
Local Spectators, 80
The Dart-Thrower, 81
Pittsfield, MA
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Texas - Under Construction
Assignment for Texas Monthly, 1995
Jasper, Texas
Opal Marshall, age 78
"I've killed 144 deer and ain't keeping' no game warden's count."
James, 1995
"untitled", '95, Texas Monthly Assignment
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Sanatorio de Agua De Dios
In 1983 when visiting my friend Wendy Ewald in Bogota, Colombia, she was working on a Fulbright Fellowship speaking fluent Spanish. After discussing several ideas Wendy offered to visit a leper colony in the mountains of Colombia with me to photograph . The institution we went to is now over 100 years old.
This institution began as a closed colony where patients were exiled to stay inside the walls of the institution. The colony even made its own postage stamps at one time. Today and for the last 25 years Agua de Dios is an open colony. With medical advancements the institution is now treating five types of leprosy, and families of lepers can now visit their relatives. There are 3,500 lepers at this colony today.
Leprosy is a chronic mycobacterial disease, infectious in some cases, primarily affecting the peripheral nervous system and secondarily involving skin and certain other tissues.
The Operating Room, 1983, Columbia
The porch, 1983
The Card Players, 83
Girl from Africa, 83
Madness, 83
Untitled, 83
Untitled, 83
Within these walls of isolation, some stay because they have no other place to go. Their family's and communities have exiled them to live the rest of their lives within this institution because of there having leprosy or being undesirable in other ways. Yet it takes long-term contact to develop this disease, most health care workers never develop symptoms and live within the same community their entire professional lives. Still in many South American countries superstitious beliefs, keep them isolated. They are called by many, "The Untouchables."
Knowing the regional stigmas about leprosy and the taboos surrounding the so called “Untouchables,” our interpreter, my friend who spoke Spanish and myself formed a group in one of the gardens of the institution to discuss my photographing with several of the residents of Agua De Dios. Language differences made communicating difficult even with an interpreter. But, when I reached out and touched someone in a friendly gesture patting them on the back, everyone noticed, this led to our shaking hands with each other and even hugging. Eventually, everyone smiled and felt comfortable and language no longer was so important. I have never forgotten that day and still search for that kind of acceptance when with others. This natural approach became my starter introduction, looking at people in the eye and reaching out to shake hands, even though some might not have eyes to see or hands to grasp.
—Shelby Lee Adams
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Lonnie Grimes, Scuddy, KY
Lonnie, 1989
Lonnie, 89, [close up]
Lonnie Grimes Grocery, 1989
Scuddy, Kentucky
