pdf - UNC Asheville

cover story
By Jill Yarnall
Photographer Tim Barnwell ’77
explores the world of traditional
crafts and music in Appalachia
Tim Barnwell
Roan Mountain Hilltoppers at Fiddler’s Grove, 2003 •
Union Grove, Iredell County, N.C.
11
“
Tim Barnwell
”
Tim Barnwell Photo Gallery
Etta Baker with electric guitar, 2005
• Morganton, Burke County, N.C. •
Recipient of NEA’s National Heritage
Fellowship in 1991.
Byard Ray playing fiddle, 1978 •
Asheville, Buncombe County, N.C.
• Winner of an NEA grant and the
Bascom Lamar Lunsford award in
1981.
Will Hines, cooper, working on
shaving horse, 2004 • Greeneville,
Greene County, Tenn. • Selected to
Early American Life magazine’s Top
200 Traditional Craftsmen for 2004,
2005 and 2007.
12
UNC asheville MAGA Z INE
Tim Barnwell
Tim Barnwell
im Barnwell ’77 is an explorer. But instead of sailing the high seas and discovering unknown lands,
he reveals the beauty of his own Appalachian
backyard through stunning black-and-white photography.
These photos have been the key to a life well-lived, filled
with curiosity that keeps this alumnus focused on his
life’s work.
Barnwell’s third book of fine art photography, Hands
in Harmony: Traditional Crafts and Music in Appalachia
(W.W. Norton & Co., 2009), is a collection of 80
portraits. The images were taken over a period of
30 years and feature musicians and craftspeople
in their homes, studios, shops or in concert. A
music CD with 22 songs from the musicians featured in the book is included with the text.
Hands in Harmony follows two earlier books,
The Face of Appalachia: Portraits from the Mountain
Farm (W.W. Norton & Co., 2003) and On
Earth’s Furrowed Brow: The Appalachian Farm in
Photographs (W.W. Norton & Co., 2007).
“The highest compliment to me is not that
I’ve flattered the person, but that someone else
in their family will look at it and say, ‘That looks
just like them,’ because I’ve captured something
in their face or in their personality that comes
through,” Barnwell said. “That’s the goal.”
And it’s a goal that he has achieved time
and time again. In addition to the three books,
Barnwell has published more than 1,000 photos in
magazines ranging from Time and Newsweek to Billboard
and American Style. His work has been widely exhibited
across the United States and abroad and is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
SOHO Photo Gallery and the New Orleans Museum of
Art, among others.
With such an impressive résumé, it’s hard to believe
that Barnwell is a self-taught artist, who credits an influential professor for steering him toward photography.
Barnwell had plans to be a chemist when he enrolled at
UNC Asheville. But his adviser, avid photographer and
political science professor Goetz Wolff, urged Barnwell
to take some of his classes and to get involved taking
photos on campus. Barnwell wound up switching majors
and shooting for the Ridge Runner student newspaper
and the yearbook. He rounded out his schedule with
courses in literature and interdisciplinary studies.
cover story
Tim Barnwell
Amanda Swimmer making pottery,
1989 • Cherokee, Swain County, N.C.
• Recipient of the North Carolina
Folk Heritage Award in 1994 and
honorary doctor of humane letters
degree from UNC Asheville in 2005.
Doc Watson backstage at a concert,
1983 • Asheville, Buncombe County,
N.C. • Recipient of seven Grammy
Awards, a Grammy Lifetime
Achievement Award, the National
Medal of the Arts, North Carolina
Award in the fine arts, and honorary
doctor of humane letters degree from
UNC Asheville in 2009.
Tim Barnwell
Jerry Wolfe, storyteller, in Cherokee
Museum, 2007 • Cherokee, Swain
County, N.C. • Winner of the North
Carolina Arts Council Heritage
Award in 2003.
“My liberal arts education gave me a lot of flexibility,
and it really taught me how to teach myself and how
to learn. And that’s more important than the particular
degree I got,” Barnwell reflected. “Photography is an
excuse to explore things, people, situations and ideas.
And I think that all plays into the liberal arts education.”
Upon graduation, Barnwell used his liberal arts
background and natural curiosity to launch his photography career. He began by working in a camera store
and eventually founded and served as director of the
Appalachian Photographic Workshops in Asheville. Later,
he created Tim Barnwell Photography, shooting color
commercial photos and fine art images. Today, Barnwell
is best known for his striking black-and-white photos of
Appalachian people and places.
“I just have a love of the medium because I think
it strips away that veneer of color and you are really
seeing the essence of the photograph,” said
Barnwell, who shoots primarily with a 4x5
large-format camera.
Though he has a studio in downtown
Asheville, Barnwell tends to work in the
basement darkroom of his east Asheville
home. From there he heads out for shoots
across Western North Carolina and the
Southern Appalachians, capturing iconic
cultural images. He’s approached farmers working with horses in their Madison
County fields to legendary musicians tuning
up backstage before playing for an audience
of thousands. In each case, Barnwell said,
the subjects have been not only cooperative
but fascinating.
He summed up his process of meeting
and documenting people and places by
saying, “My job as a documentary photographer is to realize what is unique and try to
capture that and do it in a way that is photographically interesting as well.”
Barnwell is currently at work on his next book, a
collection of black-and-white images of post offices,
churches, barber shops and other businesses that serve
as the building blocks of small communities.
Want to see more of Barnwell’s images? Visit the
Asheville Art Museum’s Holden Community Gallery
through October 10 to see 30 prints on display from
Hands in Harmony.
Several special events have also been planned in conjunction with the exhibition. For a complete schedule,
go to ashevilleart.org.
Tim Barnwell
click it: For more information, visit barnwellphoto.com
13
asheville citizen-times
Rock on!
Students get an up-close geology lesson at the I-40 rockslide
“Y
ou are now standing on a landslide.” Two
dozen, hard-hat wearing Earth Science students immediately looked at their shoes and
waited for the earth to move.
But there was no rumbling rock. Instead, Rick Wooten,
a geologist from the N.C. Geological Survey, showed the
students geological maps of the “massive creep” in the
Hunters Crossing neighborhood near Waynesville, where
they were standing. While not as dramatic as an active landslide, the slowly
moving neighborhood gave the class of budding geology students a view of how geology can have real-world
applications.
As Wooten explained, the neighborhood is slowly
slipping downhill at the glacial speed of one or two millimeters a year, carrying with it at least four homes, one of
which already has been condemned due to compromised
structural supports.
“We’re continuing to monitor this site with wells that
measure the movement underground. It could be that this
slide will stabilize, but we won’t know that without a lot
more research. We want to be able to predict whether this
is a safety issue for residents. That’s what geologists do;
By Debbie griffith
14
UNC asheville MAGA Z INE
that’s what you will do as future geologists,” Wooten told
the students.
The slowly slipping neighborhood was in stark contrast
to the site of a massive landslide further west near the
Tennessee state line that the students visited earlier in
the day. The sudden, catastrophic landslide at 2 a.m. on
October 25, 2009, shut down Interstate 40 in Madison
County and created national news. The 50-mile detour for
travelers caused business losses of up to $1 million a day
for almost seven months while the highway was closed.
Professors Bill Miller and Jeff Wilcox, who teach Earth
Science and Geology, looked at the landslide catastrophe
and saw a teaching moment. They pulled some strings
with their geological colleagues in the N.C. Department
of Transportation and arranged a special tour of the site
for their students on a cold February day.
About 30 UNC Asheville students were joined by
fellow students from East Tennessee State and Western
Carolina universities to experience the engineering marvel of cleaning up a landslide that was initially 150 feet
high and 200 feet long and that buried four lanes of I-40
beneath tons of 600-million-year-old schist.