My former university insisted that Adams’s work “is the photographic analog of J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy…the author and the photographer tell corresponding stories through different means.” This is true, but not in the way that my alma mater insists that it is. The shared story and analogues at work are not about people, but about power. It reflects how credibility falls easily to those given the privilege of defining who or what Appalachian is. It also shows the rewards that fall to individuals, universally men and exclusively white, regardless of the company they keep. It is the
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