Salt & Truth - Shelby Lee Adams documents changes in our society

The Fahey/Klein Gallery presents 'Salt & Truth' an exhibition by Shelby Lee Adams until the 15th of October, inspired by the book of the same name, published by Candela Books in 2011.

For about 40 years, the photographer from Kentucky (*1950) accompanied and portrayed the inhabitants from and around Appalachia. All the people that ended up in front of the camera had a direct relation with the photographer. Thanks to mouth-to-mouth propaganda, the result is a kaleidoscopic tapestry of human relations.

Shelby Lee Adams’ project in his own words: “Today, it is becoming more difficult to find actual salt-of-the-earth people. They are disappearing as we are overrun by a more sugarcoated society…

The families that have always lived here, many for more than a couple hundred years, are being dispersed by a new breed of Appalachian. There are land developers driving Hummers and Escalades, owning odd-shaped swimming pools and mansions built into the mountaintops after the coal is removed and the mountains reshaped…

It is a more varied world now. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. Salt lasts. And these hard-formed people from earlier times are still here, even as their population declines.”


Salt & Truth by Shelby Lee Adams
148 North La Brea, Los Angeles, CA 90036
www.faheykleingallery.com