Kentucky, 1964 Summer

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In the summer of 1964, partly inspired by the work of Depression-era photographers and the writings of James Agee, Gedney traveled to a rural coal-mining area of Eastern Kentucky. There, he photographed the landscapes and the people of Big Rock, Grassy Branch Holler, Two Forks Holler, Leatherwood, Hazard, and other communities, eventually meeting laid-off coalminer Willie Cornett and family, and staying with them for eleven days. The photographs Gedney took typically feature the Cornetts, the Couch family, and others, sitting on their porches, working and playing outside, eating meals, sleeping, and socializing. Gedney had sketched out a future project on Americans and their cars, and his Kentucky images often feature men, women and children clustered around family vehicles, attempting to repair them, draping themselves over car hoods and hanging on the doors, or in deliberately posed portraits. Gedney returned to visit the Cornetts again in 1972, staying for over two weeks and documenting the changes in the family members and in their circumstances. The portraits of Willie and Vivian Cornett and their children going about their daily lives are among his best-known work.

During his visits to Kentucky, Gedney kept expense and memo books, housed in the Writings and Notebooks Series, in which he noted overheard conversations, pronunciations, local sayings, and his observations on Eastern Kentucky culture, especially marriage, men and women, money, and other themes. He also received letters from the Cornetts and from Boyd Couch, found in the Correspondence Series, and a few letters of reply are also found there. A few additional test prints from the Kentucky work, probably printed much later, can be found in the Film and Development Tests series.

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