Earl Palmer’s
Photographs of Appalachia on Display at Perspective Gallery
My Friend Earl, an
exhibit of Earl Palmer’s twentieth century photographs of Appalachia will be on
display at the Perspective
Gallery November 14, 2013 through
January 3, 2014. There will be an opening reception at the gallery on Friday, November
15, from 5 to 7 p.m. Music will be
provided by Old Man Kelly http://www.oldmankelly.com/ Both the exhibit and the reception are free
and open to the public. The Perspective Gallery is located on the second floor
in Squires Student
Center. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 9 p.m., and
Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. through December 12.
The gallery is closed on Mondays and during Thanksgiving week. Gallery is open by appointment only after
December 12.
Earl Palmer (1905 – 1996) was mountain born and became a
local legend after moving to Cambria, Virginia and becoming the “Mayor of
Cambria” and the owner of Palmer Grocery. In 1990 Jean Haskell a former
Virginia Tech Professor in the Appalachian Studies program published a critical
and biographical commentary based on extensive interviews with Earl
Palmer. The book titled The Appalachian Photographs of Earl Palmer
included 120 of Palmer’s best photos. Dialogue from this text is included in the
exhibit. Also supporting the photos are
artifacts on loan from the Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Tech.
The photos in My
Friend Earl are on loan from the John Kline collection and spans more than
50 years of images gleaned from Earl Palmer’s travels through the rural Appalachian
landscape of the southern mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee,
North Carolina and Kentucky. Through his
photo narratives, Earl captures the strength of character and the
self-sufficient lifestyles of the mountain people he encounters along the way. The exhibit of black and white photographs is
an important documentation of Earl’s vision of a culture on the edge of
transition.
Robin Scully Boucher
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