Stacy Kranitz: As it was Give(n) to Me

Posted by Fabio 23 October 2019

As it was Give(n) to Me is a collection of images, taken by Kranitz, over a ten year span. The series traces explo-ration and extraction in the Appalachian region of the United States. This exhibition was recently exhibited at Ren-contres d’Arles Photography Festival in France and shortlisted for the Louis Roederer New Discovery Prize. A forthcoming monograph of this series will be published by Twin Palm in the Spring of 2020.

Beginning in the 19th Century, the Appalachian region was devastated by the coal industry which took valuable resources from the land, leaving the inhabitants of the region impover-ished. In the 1960s, the War on Poverty was declared, with the government announcing it would put an end to poverty in America and Appalachia was the epicenter. Krantiz states “Pho-tographers descended on Appalachia to make images that would help unite Americans around the effort to improve the lives of a destitute and struggling people. Instead, the photographers offered a simplistic and superficial image of poverty that has haunted the Appalachian people ever since.”

Kranitz began work on this series in 2009. While there, she became aware of the problematic role of photography in this region. “I began by reckoning with the fact that I had come to Appalachia with a fantasy of what I wanted it to be. I realized this fantasy contested my desire to provide an objective portrayal because objectivity in documentary photography is its own kind of fantasy. My work in Appalachia is about the tension between these two desires.”