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Background information
"When
Wendy EWALD arrived in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in 1975,
she began a project that aimed to reveal the lives, intimate dreams and
fears of local schoolchildren. Tasked with finding authentic ways of
representing the lives of these children, she gave each of them a camera
and interviewed them about their childhood in the mountains. Through
these intriguing transcripts and photographs, we discover the lives of
families as seen through the eyes of their children: where domestic,
rural life is understood with startling openness and depth. In Portraits
and Dreams, life’s most mysterious realities – love, loss, violence,
death, new life – are given voice through an altogether novel discovery:
the camera. We learn the eloquence and originality with which children
see the world and we see a generous new way of engaging children in the
possibilities of the photographic medium.
Content
This
revised and expanded edition of Wendy EWALD’s now-rare book 'Portraits
and Dreams', first published in 1985, and called 'An American
masterpiece,' offers access to a different and broadened view of the
rural south over the span of 35 years, and includes contemporary
pictures and stories by eight of the students from the original
publication." (publisher's note, © Mack books, 2020)
In the press
"The
resulting pictures […] call up a music of the place only WENDY EWALD’s
students could hear and access; and thus the book amounts to a reliquary
of a magic hour in the children’s own lives, fleeting and resonant." (©
Rebecca Bengal, IN: The Paris Review)
"A
unique vision of the rural south: one where imagination is uninhibited,
aspiration is untainted by economic realities, and where the adults —
tired, covered in coal dust, distinctly not Dolly Parton — seem to live
in a parallel universe." (© The Financial Times)
"Encouraged
by Wendy EWALD to delve into their dreams, the children return from
sleep with visions as dark as as a Grimms’ fairy tale: of killing a best
friend, or of a brother buried under a woodpile. But it’s the
revelations of waking thoughts that truly disturb." (© Andrea K. Scott,
in: The New Yorker)
"This new version [...] brings new life to what is already considered to be a masterpiece." (© The Washington Post)