HIDDEN APPALACHIA

There has been a visual stigma that has fervently attached itself to the identity of central Appalachia. This stems from photographs taken during the great depression to President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty initiative. This monolithic view of the central Appalachian region as poor, white, and uneducated doesn’t highlight the diversity that does exist within these mountains. The area makes up the multitudes of individuals that live out of the context of a homogenous lifestyle that has been painted over the region by outsiders. This doesn’t just apply to the people who live here, but how the land has been used. Many might think about the land extraction through coal mining. More recently, the reclamation of strip mines for federal prisons. Even though coal companies and the prison industrial complex own vast swathes of land there are also hundreds of acres of protected land. The series Hidden Appalachia will explore what is often overlooked here – the inherent beauty of the land that has been untouched by industry. It will also look at the ridges that surround it that have been scarred by energy extraction and clear cutting. This project looks at the good and bad stories that exist below and around Pine Mountain’s peaks.