Moon Shine, 2014-2018

Extent:

3.0 Linear Feet (2 boxes)

Scope and content:

"Moon Shine," formerly known as "Silent Ballad," comprises a portfolio of 62 photographic prints by Rachel Boillot of old-time musicians and their families living in or near the Cumberland mountains of Tennessee.

The photographs, taken with a large-format 4x5 camera, were made along the mountain roads between Signal Mountain and Cumberland Gap, tracing the Cumberland Trail corridor in East Tennessee. Subjects include fiddlers and a fiddle maker, banjo players, guitarists, ballad singers, and musicians' spouses. One image captures participants in a Cherokee song ritual performed at the Fall Creek Falls Festival near Spencer. Settings include old homesteads and new residences, interiors, a music hall and a theater. There are also landscapes of the tri-state area of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, including several of Sequatchie State Park near Pikeville. Tennessee communities pictured include Knoxville, Harriman, Harrogate, Jamestown, Oak Ridge, LaFollette, Lenoir City, Rockwood, Spencer, Norris, and Whitleyville. Later prints include images taken on the Virginia border. There is one portrait of noted fiddler Clyde Davenport at his home in Monticello, Kentucky, near the Tennessee border.

The project also inspired a photobook, published in 2019, and a documentary film titled In that Valley of Gold.

The color pigment inkjet prints measure 20x24 and 21x25 inches (image size approximately 16x20) and were printed in 2016-2018 from scans of 4x5 inch and 120 mm color negatives on Museo Silver Rag paper.

The prints arriving in the first installment bear no dates, but were taken from about 2014-2018; the prints in the second installment are dated by the photographer and were taken during the same period.

Physical facet:

62 inkjet prints

Contents

Using These Materials