Appalachia in Photos//Jamie Boraks

These images were taken in the Piedmont of North Carolina and the Appalachian mountains. The Appalachians are older than Saturn's rings, bones, and trees. I'm interested in the things they've seen, and the way the landscape has changed (and not changed) around them. The first and third pictures were taken on a former family farm-turned public nature preserve, and while the buildings and vehicles have, in some sense, a timeless feeling of 20th and 21st century American rural life, it's nothing but a drop in the ocean for what the mountains and valleys (second and fourth photos) have seen. 

Jamie Boraks (they/he) grew up in Davidson, North Carolina and now lives in Washington, D.C. Their photography and textile work focuses on the Appalachian landscape, memory, and the lived experience of everyday people past and present.