Driving down that little country road early in the morning I could just see the sun crack the horizon as I passed a Mennonite farm. Activity had started before dawn in the Kentucky hills around Liberty, site of the 10th annual Mountain People’s Workshop. The patriarch of the family was up early to put on his straw hat and get the fire started over the “pan” where he would spend his day making sorghum molasses. The children dressed in the durable and picturesque attire of young Mennonites – straw hats and dark clothing for men and bonnets and plain long dresses for the girls. The steam was soon rising as the sweet green juice of the cane boiled and processed into the thick, sweet brown syrup. A stranger with a camera hovered over them.
The Mennonites were not the only ones out early that day At Browns Restaurant on the square, “regulars” came in to take their accustomed seats for breakfast. The unspoken pecking order of seating is strictly observed, but allowances were made this day for the outsiders. Seems the town had been invaded by friendly strangers – college students, if you will-and they all carry cameras. The “boys” in the restaurant watched them with amusement as the students climbed, squatted, leaned, and teetered, trying to get the best moment from the best angle Actually, they kind of liked the attention.
Over at the Chamber of Commerce building things were a little different also. The furniture has been put aside In the back, hoses and wires ran everywhere as the students set up a photo lab in the bathroom. Twenty-six photojournalists had already been given their marching orders by some of the finest professionals and teachers in the land. They included Jack Corn, chief photographer at the Chicago Tribune, Tom Hardin, director of photography and graphics at the Louisville Courier Journal, Bradley Clift, 1987 POY Newspaper Photographer of the Year and photojournalist at the Hartford Current, and Joanna Pinneo, magazine photographer for the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board and third place magazine photographer of the year The professionals from Western included Dave LaBelle, four time Regional Photographer of the Year, runner up Pictures of the Year, runner up to Eugene Smith in the National NPPA Understanding Award, and now photojournalist in Residence at Western Kentucky University and Mike Morse, director of the photojournalism program at Western and director of the Mountain Peoples Workshop.
The shooters were given leads with a strict admonition not to set up pictures. The heat was definitely on. The shooters were drawn half from a photojournalism class at Western Kentucky University and the other half from professionals all over the eastern United States. They came for one reason, to sharpen their shooting skills in general and particularly in the picture story. It would be an exhausting weekend with lots of pressure, 18 hour days, and maybe a few tears, but lots of help from those who have been there. They’d shoot 12 rolls of TX and get rigorous critique as often as they came in to drop film. Late nights were devoted to presentations by the faculty in the form of critiques, panel discussions, and individual presentations. It was definitely a learning experience – learning to meet and work with people in their own culture, learning to shoot tight and with purpose, learning the meaning of content and composition, how to chain photos to produce a story and how to take constructive critique. As one shooter put it afterward, “I paid my dues at the Mountain People’s Workshop.”
