Stacy Kranitz: Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down

Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down is drawn from a body of work by Stacy Kranitz that examines visual depictions of Appalachia from the invention of photography to the present day, tracing how the region has been constructed, challenged, and reimagined over time.

The exhibition follows a chronology that begins with the first photographs produced in the region, and shows how image-making was already a tool for shaping perceptions. A family portrait of the infamous Hatfield clan from 1888, for example, includes a young boy holding a revolver across his chest. The sections follow key moments in Appalachian history, including the arrival of the FSA photographers and the War on Poverty, and show how each moment corresponds to developments in photo technology.

Kranitz pairs a selection of the historical images with her own photographs, which center on a decade-long friendship with Pat Greene, a man living in a former coal town in West Virginia. Seen side-by-side, the images invite comparisons: A creek baptism photo from 1940 is situated above an image of Greene holding a beer can and floating in an innertube. Are the two photos paired because he is enacting another kind of baptism, with Kranitz noticing how people continue to use water as a gathering place? Or does the juxtaposition speak to the devolving state of spirituality? Or does it reflect how pollution has affected our ideas of water as a purifying source? Photography has always been an open story, and its capacity for reevaluation is a large part of what makes it such an enduring medium.

Interspersed throughout the exhibition’s photographs are pages from texts written by Harry Caudill and JD Vance, two influential figures whose accounts of Appalachia placed blame on the Appalachian people themselves. Kranitz’s corresponding essay film, on view here for the first time in New York, adds a sensory dimension to the exhibition. You can hear the drawling Southern accents of the mountaineers, watch how deftly they finger-pick a banjo for their family, and listen in as Caudill says, “This is truly a pitiful spectacle. … This is a reproof to the country.”

— Laura Hutson Hunter, Exhibition Curator

https://wp.nyu.edu/gallatingalleries/stacy-kranitz-aint-no-grave-gonna-hold-my-body-down/