William Gedney’s Kentucky
William Gedney’s Kentucky photographs are the sort that invoke Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio…no, no, something grimier and more spirited, something less grotesque and melancholy…I can’t place an appropriate comparison, only some reverie of a time and place more simple and real…I’m not sure what to say – in effect they leave me speechless (a place good pictures should leave you) except for that on this winter afternoon, it is hard for me to imagine that photographs could achieve anything more.
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
photo: ©William Gedney
There are so many more if you follow the link above.
The best photos i have seen in some time:)
These are pretty good.
The closest comparison to me is a sort of updated Dorothea Lange. The guy in the car might be a reincarnation of young Elvis, and the shot of the girls in the kitchen has great composition & classic lighting.
How funny.
I’ve only just “discovered” William Gedney in the last 24 hours. At first I thought his Kentucky photos were staged portraits. I was still blown away, but that staged feel kind of kept me at arms length.
That is of course until I eventually found my way to the stunning archive on the Duke University website, and could more or less trawl through the original contact sheets. Only then did I even begin to comprehend how astonishing the series is. It was that feeling of “holy fuck… how did I not know that this guy existed before now”, followed by a deep humbling, as I clicked through one mind blowing photograph after another. All 61 pages of them. They took my breath away.
Anyway, I promptly searched on your blog to see if you had posted about William Gedney before, only to find this.
I should have known better! Of course you had, and in 2006 no less…
William Gedney’s Kentucky photos are wonderful. These are pictures of my grilfriend’s father and his family. Bill is the little boy smoking the tabacco, thats her dad. He passed away a few years back and seeing these photos is crazy!