MOONSHINE by Bertien van Manen - Vintage Photography Book, Appalachian Culture Documentary - Perfect for Photography Enthusiasts & History Buffs

オランダ人フォトグラファー、ベルティアン・ファン・マネン（Bertien van Manen）の作品集。密造酒を造る人々、通称 “ムーンシャイナーズ”が暮らす、アメリカの東部のアパラチア地域を舞台に、1985年から2013年の間に何度も訪れ現地の炭鉱労働者の大家族と生活を共にしながら彼らの日常を撮影。約30年間に渡って撮り続けられた写真には、世代間の違いや変貌する風景など多くの変化が読み取れる。

Spanning almost three decades, Moonshine is a portrait of the American Appalachian folk, a mythologised region populated by ‘moonshiners’. Van Manen’s images are defined by a fierce intimacy with her subject, as the viewer teeters on the edge of the frame, perpetually trespassing on private moments: rollicking children practicing handstands on the couch; a kneeling daughter combing the hair of her grandmother. Van Manen first visited the region in 1985, to the Appalachian areas of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, returning periodically up until 2013 to visit mining families with whom she lived: the Boggs family with their ten red-haired sons; miners Mavis and Junior. The intergenerational images subtly trace the insidious changes undergone by Appalachia – the slow and steady demise of the mining industry, and the migration of inhabitants from ramshackle wooden cabins to the city, or urban trailer parks. Van Manen intermixes black-and-white images with later colour work – another register of time passing and the inevitability of change.