Shelby Lee Adams - Events and Workshops

2007-03-04T11:33:00.184-05:00

Photo Workshops: 2012

International Center of Photo, NYC

Location: Grand Central Terminal, NYC

Model - "Sunny," International Center of Photography Photo Workshop,

"Your Voice with Lighting."

Shelby Lee Adams Workshop - held - Jan. 16th - 19th, 2012

For Full Time Students Only.

Photo above by Shelby, digital, 21MM lens, strobe pack lighting back of model, 1/5 sec. camera shutter exposure time. 1/4 power on light pack, 1/600 flash duration. Available Ambient light burns in, within environment.

ICP students working and learning lighting with Shelby in Grand Central Terminal.

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Palm Springs Workshop

April 1st - 5th, 2012

Details and Link posted here.

Shelby's Palm Spring's Slide Show.

Three Church Women, 2010

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Exhibition and Caring

2007-03-04T10:00:00.116-05:00

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Photography Exhibition
Summer 2008
"Friends are Forever"

Gate Way To Heaven Church, '95
[Pastor Bill Noble in photo]

Exhibition Location - "Gate Way To Heaven Church"
Hardshell Cannie Road, Kentucky

Photography Exhibition and cook out made with four generations of the Noble Family and friends. Photographs to be distributed to families at close of exhibit.

Many of my friends and subjects over the years have been published in three books, pictures reviewed and written about together in newspapers and photo magazines, filmed separately-yet film edits shown together. Many have never had the occasion to meet each other before. Further, I think it important that my long term friends and subjects have some limited edition prints that are collected and exhibited outside the area, know their value, and have a vested interest in that value by owning a few prints themselves.

Donnie with Baby and Cow's, 1999
[Noble Family]

This summer 2008 celebrates my 35Th year making pictures in this region.

Over 100 people attended the festivities June 8th, '08

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"Gate Way to Heaven," Church on opening day.

Cookout side of Church.

Food.

Cake Cutting!

Exhibition

Exhibition inside Church.

Musician's

Photographing

Vanessa being photographed with Dad before taking her photograph home.

Callie with her two photographs at closing.

Jason with Father and Uncle's photo.

Jason taking home photo.

Junior with photograph of Father.

Rachel holding her family photo.

Lloyd Deane, [Brother & Sister] holding photo of their father.

Thanks to all for attending.
Photographs courtesy of Paul Paletti.

To bridge differences and open hearts between the elite cultures and the grass roots cultures of the world, photography is an excellent tool. Openness and honesty help too. It's easier than you might think.
SLA

"Friends are Forever."

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Open our Hearts

We have more admiration for those above us than those of our own level or below. We aspire to reach higher, improve ourselves and innovate. When we are close - on an equal level, many tend to distance themselves, claiming their own uniqueness, separateness and so many isolate. Others are viewed below, with many tending to ignore nor help - but pitying, ridiculing and idealizing those less fortunate saying seek upward-ness. We are all interconnected on the highest level internally; see that, open your hearts to that possibility/reality and our problems will begin to diminish.

Shelby Lee Adams
August 2009

Basho, 1644-1694, Japanese Poet

“Go to the pines if you want to learn about the pines, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must let go of your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and don’t learn. Your poetry arises by itself when you and the object have become one, when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden light glimmering there. However well phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling isn’t natural – if you and the object are separate – then your poetry isn’t true poetry but merely your subjective counterfeit.”

Matsuo Basho

Country Prejudice

Seeing and non-seeing is a part of the have and have not divide. Economic disparity here collides socially. Struggle is evident when specific rural town’s people meet country holler people, on mutual ground, say, in a parking lot at a school function. Time hardened prejudiced community members can be found, speaking only among themselves, defying all others, clutching their own, only mutely acknowledging those just met, standing among them, together-divided. They talk about, in front of and around, but not directly too. As a child growing up in the mountains, I was uncertain what this behavior actually meant. I felt the awkwardness and tensions created. I was told this kept people in their place. Prejudice stops unconfident voices silent, causing more invisible walls of isolation, speaking of others-in third person, as if they’re not their, faces in front-of-but not recognized “face to face.” Yet, you are face to face, as in no other place, their home-place too. Non-seeing perceptions and non-affirming behaviors are weapons of control practiced here, exercising the power of who is up and over top of the one’s down and below; this has been the practice here for generations. This can and often does transfix entire families, especially children, forever damaging. I wanted to cry out as a youth saying look here this isn’t right, this injustice of refusing to see and accept each other. Freedom from my reactive conditioning to this behavior has been a long time coming. As an adult today, I still witness this behavior when back home, it still causes pain, seeing others treated as if non-existent, knowing - both sides will deny.

Shelby Lee Adams 2010

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"You break bread with a man you have moved on to another level of friendship. I heard somewheres that that's true the world over."

The Sunset Limited
Cormac McCarthy

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Give with Care

"I hear people say: Oh, if I were only rich, I would do great things to help people. But we all can be rich in love and generosity. Moreover, if we give with care, if we find out the exact wants of those who need our help most, we are giving our own loving interest and concern, which is worth more than all the money in the world."

Albert Schweitzer

How to Help ?

Over the years I have had many wonderful experiences helping people within the mountain hollers. This Spring of 2009, because of the national ABC TV program 20/20 Diane Sawyer's "Children of Appalachia;" I to am receiving e mails and calls to my site, from people asking, it this true, is there such need in America? My answer is yes and an individuals motivations to help are needed.

I have been working in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky since 1974, spending 2 - 3 months on average each year. I am well established with some communities. Below are listed two grass-roots community churches that help country people. If you are inclined to send care packages to Appalachia to help the poor directly, the two churches below are recommended. Contact them directly if you like, inform the church that you have seen my site and are contacting them from here.

Updated - January 2012.

Joyce and James Boggs

724 Big Fork Rd.

Yeaddis, KY 41777

Ph. 606-279-2061

[Community Church in Leslie Co. KY]

Harold & Phyllis Turner

527 Right Fork - Beehive RD.

Slemp, KY 41763

Ph. 606-675-5331

[ Community Church in Perry Co. Ky.]

SLA

Trust

With the publication of my 4th book, "salt & truth," October 2011, I will be establishing my own trust, created to help preserve my archive of photography and help the people of Eastern Kentucky who have been my subjects and friends for now over 36 years. This trust will have tax-exempt status, so that donations to it will be tax deductible. The guidelines and purpose are to help educate uniquely talented Appalachian children at home in high school and in part college.

We are currently investigating and researching finding an umbrella non-profit that we can work through, located in Ky. that can facilitate tax deductible contributions. To administer a new non-profit myself with government requirements would be a full time job in itself. Time I do not have unfortunately.

To work with the two churches above, would benefit the people directly.

Below are some examples of helping.

Through helping individuals we better each other.

Sancie and Charity, 08

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Drilling a well, Hooterville, 2000

My friend Hort Collins was getting ill in the year 2000, he could no longer carry his water. I had a well drilling co. drill him a well and place a water pump next to his home, before city water was piped into this area.

I once heard on an NPR radio program about a project Robert F. Kennedy descreetly funded for years with a one-man office in rural West Virginia. This local man drove around and studied modest homes and invited people to come to his office and apply for help. All he offered was tin roofing materials. But, tin roofing if you think about it, is the most expensive material to buy for a home and yet the most important and long lasting material. It gives one a sense of security to have a good roof over your home, no matter how modest. I understood from this radio program that this information was not disclosed for many years after Kennedy’s death. He in fact had helped many, many people in this region through simple but very effective programs.

In working with people in Eastern Kentucky when you offer to help have a new roof put on their home, they sometimes politely ask for their church house to be done first. This is the kind of project I have funded many times and does help. It is best to make sure the family owns their own home before repairing.

The supply of good water and a solid roof over our heads is something so many of us assume everyone has. Used clothing shipped by UPS or delivered through the post office can reach this area. Reconditioned water pumps, used kitchen stoves and bedding supplies are needed. The churches above are good distribution centers, all volunteer based.

Caring

In smallness and insecurity often people from my culture and others, when viewing our adversity, see their world isolated and ridiculed. I have always tried to identify my work with a larger perspective and with purpose. That purpose being to expand our tolerance, acceptance and understandings of each other’s humanity, no matter how diverse. In my childhood, I grew up seeing my people suffer at the hands of each other needlessly. To explore within my community, my intentions have always been to learn, find connections, basic, primal and universal truths that link us all together, to uplift the "underling" rather than ridicule. “The fullest development of every individual creates a society of equals [1.].” So often, we compare ourselves to each other causing isolation, instead of encouraging communal growth.

See the bigger picture I say to my students and colleagues. As water seeks the lowest level it muddies, a place most fear. I grew up within a combination of circumstances that gave me accessibility and knowledge others shun. That fact has opened doors for me. Elevate consciousness by exploring the lower cracks and crevices of your specific roots, study and learn. We have long painted a pretty picture of ourselves by painting red paint over a beautiful red rose. Study the core, don’t be supercilious. See the "underlings" and help bring them forward, they are a part of our basic culture, needing recognition, for our mutual growth.

We read how God is always found in humble places. Humble places seem to produce more believers in love, spirit and true openhearted fellowship. To see this one must have the patience and commitment to look beyond the surface of things. One must become a seeker themselves, dropping ego and self-defensiveness; knowing you don’t have to prove your position, just be OK with the experience. Caring beyond ourselves benefits our total and infinite humanness. My community is your community; let's open our hearts and see more clearly.

Shelby Lee Adams

[1.] J. Krishnamurti, “Total Freedom,” Harper Collins, 1996

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Photographic Vision

2007-03-04T09:50:00.026-05:00

Wide Angle Vision - Shelby Lee Adams

Previsualization, the term used to describe what the artist conceives mentally when in the process or before making art. When the work is completely executed, the artist often refers to this moment as a gift or guiding inspiration. The previsalization may have appeared as an intuitive, instantly clear image, like a flash of light, or something hidden in the unconscious that had to be wrestled free, but its effects can be superlative to one’s work.

As a photographer when working for weeks on end in the mountains, observing and participating in my environment daily, my eyes and senses become acutely aware. I see and observe on multiple levels, both physically and mentally. You can feel overpowered and weakened in spirit, humbled waiting. When I first began photographing with a view camera, I became frustrated with the limited flat field focal view. After awhile I began using wide-angle lenses, later adding studio lighting. These tools help create what I experience and see, a multiple view of reality simultaneously. Not in the historically traditional manner and use of the view camera, but real field vision non-the less. It is liberating to view the world and make concrete what and how you really see.
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“When we were very young it was a wide, wide scene. As we grow older, however, we come to take a more restricted view. The angle of our tunnel vision may reduce to something like five degrees, on either side of which those increasingly vague objects are more or less ignored. We become wretchedly exclusive, self-occupied, narrow-minded and narrow-headed, hemmed in. We become sick.”

Douglas Harding – Look for Yourself

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Leveling

My people look at their own photographs differently. They feel recognized and accepted for whom they are. They do not feel threatened by the power of photography or devalued by it, but more acknowledged. They talk of their oppressions and difficulty’s as fact. The leveling of self-importance between us brings forth a more emphatic recognition. Perhaps, only those who have suffered themselves can really understand suffering. We acknowledge what we know.

Shelby Lee Adams
March 22, 08 - Easter Sunday
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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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Liberation - Douglas Harding

We live above ground in the light, of course, but the quality and safety of the life we live there rests upon what’s below ground in the dark.

I am what I look at.

From what I’m looking out of, I have inside information denied to all outsiders.

I’m inviting you to doubt what the world tells you about your identity, and take a fresh look at yourself. Just drop all presuppositions and be true to yourself.
Place reliance on what you perceive instead of what you conceive. Fieldwork is valuable if you are open to experience instead of speculations. You observe the observer.

We don’t see what we see, but what someone tells us to see.

What home is like – want be enough to exorcise forever the Thing that has invaded and haunted your Home all your adult life. Though it vanishes on close inspection, it returns the instant your attention wanders. It is your wraith, your doppelganger, and if you don’t keep casting it out it will cast you out and be the death of you. Everything perishes.

The viewer is the viewed and you coincide with you, where there remains nothing to perish, where you are eccentric no longer.

Get the seer moving instead of the seen.

UPANISHAD: God made the senses turn outwards, therefore a man looks outward, not into himself. But now and again a daring soul, desiring immortality, has looked back and found himself.

The Wide Awake One that – though homely and obvious and transparent through and through – fills me with worship and wonder at the mystery of its self-origination. Who shall set limits to the bright blessings that can arise from our growing willingness to trust what we see, instead of what we’re told to see?

Get the picture without being the screen.

Every day it becomes more apparent that “ we must love one another or die.”
Today our well based fear is to look within - is to disappear, and our baseless fear that this means annihilation – are more subtle and efficient. Everyone who sees that to disappear as a particular thing is to reappear instantly as the No-thing that is the imperishable Home of all that perishes, and that to die now is to die never.

Douglas Harding
Look for Yourself

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The Art Gallery

Within the art gallery environment, all sides are equals in the same ceremony, observing and communing. Where else and how else, can this happen? The walls dividing us must dissolve. The art gallery represents a platform that provides a purposeful place for our mutual self-study and coexistence. Our sensitivity to cultural and humanistic diversity within the body, mind and spirit of all peoples must be expanded and respected. My life and work have been dedicated to this pursuit. SLA

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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

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

He Raiseth Up [Edited Version]

When people are treated with the utmost respect, they learn to feel worthy of reverence; they realize that they have absolute value. I have learned that in order to establish myself, I must help others to establish themselves. Bridging difference requires some emptying of self-importance.

How we look and gaze upon each other at the onset of every single day is an important exercise and discipline, suspend judgment and comparison. Comparison is a form of competition that leads to aggression and separation. Unfortunately, many only see the world through themselves, still only seeing themselves. My people in spite of having less, they have not lost themselves, in fact they have developed more compassion for all.

Seeing and participating in our shared humanity, understanding differences, interconnecting, transforming and transcending – all inspire change and encourage acceptance. This is the healing and redemptive power of art and religion. Opening our perceptions and emotions, to respectfully appreciating differences help unify people, expanding tolerance and diversity, creating a flow of authentic language and visibility, that defeats stigmatization. But many resist... the “all” or rich multiplicity of humanity and have lost their hearts, remaining separate in isolated comfort zones or narcissistic cells.

Stability can only be achieved and maintained by all recognizing mutual equality.

The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust… to set them among princes and inherit a seat of honor.
1 Samuel 2. 7-8, King James Bible

Shelby Lee Adams
May 2009

A Viewer's Response

We live in a world where clean, rich, well-spoken, going to the right places and being seen with the right people is valued far beyond anything else. And here, right in front of my eyes are your photos - so obviously a world and a people who have no thoughts of these things. They are untouched and untouchable by those things - not because they aren't attainable to them but because those things aren't them. They know themselves better than we will ever know ourselves. They are defined by Family, Land and Soul not by car, job or friends.
And maybe that's the heart of the matter for me - maybe that's why at first I turned away, I felt embarrassment with the photos - I thought I was embarrassed for them and their lack of. No, I am embarrassed for ME and my lack of. I have lost who I am along the way.

Nandi Boliek

Education

Our society should offer every citizen ample opportunity for individual growth. Only through education can people achieve personal development. Only through personal development will society evolve.

Richard Thurman

Paul Klee

"Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface... but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth."

“One eye sees, the other feels…”

Paul Klee
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Compassion

''A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.''

Albert Einstein

"Buddhahood involves a state of complete awareness that finds blissful expression in a compassion that tirelessly embraces all living beings, manifesting whenever necessary to help them reach their own freedom from suffering."

The Dalai Lama

"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."

Pema Chodron

"Compassion is a particularly difficult virtue. It demands that we go beyond the limitations of our egotism, insecurity and inherited prejudice."

Karen Armstrong

"Until mankind can extend the circle of his compassion to include all living things, he will never, himself, know peace."

Albert Schweitzer

Why is it that we become more humble as we become more like God? "From within or from behind," Emerson wrote, "A light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." Compassion is another name for clarity.

Dhu'L-Nun AL-Misri [796-861]

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"Now working for 36 years, within the tradition's of black and white photography expressing the subtlety of inner relationships with people I’ve known for such a long time. It is the depths of trust, relationships and acceptance that transcends beyond just the document inviting you [the viewer] to participate.”

Shelby Lee Adams

“Only when one approaches the work of art nonjudgementally does it begin to reveal the artist’s personality and creativity and their relationship.’’

Donald Kuspit, “The End of Art”

A Letter from Kentucky

I am 51 and your work shows a lot of the life I experienced. Shucky beans, I love 'em and tell everyone about them but people don't have a clue what I am talking about. These things are heritage that has to be remembered. Baptism's in the creek... dinner on the ground... the wakes for the deceased in the homes... all that is falling by the wayside. I think our country would be in a lot better shape if we still lived like that. Babies drank fresh cows milk strained through a cloth... I shook milk in a jar to make butter and buttermilk...
People don't have a clue. I hope you do more work... bring back more memories... the newspapers used for wallpaper is how my mom learned to read, my dad taught her after they got married. They didn't have TV or anything-so they'd lay in bed and read the walls.

Please tell me you will do more work.
A Fan
Paris, Kentucky
AUGUST 27,'09

Viewer Response

I owe it to you to thank you for giving me a reason and a vehicle by which I can explore and better understand my own history, my own roots, my own family and children, and even myself.

It's distressing to me that there are people who claim that you exploit the people you understand and accept so fully. I do understand that not everyone can't look at these people in the unflinching way that you or I might, and in an effort to make themselves comfortable, question your motives to ease their own discomfort. I find your work honest and real and true. Sometimes it's hard to look at my own parents ... but I'm not gonna stop just because it's hard, occasionally. To do that would be to cast shame on them, and there is no shame there. They worked hard all their lives. They never had much materially. But they accept who they are ... and amazingly, accept everybody else they meet without judgment. They are an uncommon kind, and I still have much to learn from them.

Sarah, Mississippi

May 2010