The series by Susan May Tell was selected by Marina Hadley, Gallery Owner, MZUrbanArt, during portfolios reviews organized by The New York Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP NY) on February 18th, 2015, in New York.
SEEN AND FELT: APPALACHIA 2012 is a series of photographs about Appalachia. Or is it? Taken in rural West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania during a 4000 mile road trip in 2012, the series is as much about a state of mind. Of what Appalachia is or is not. What it represents or doesn’t. Maybe it’s about America, its promises and dreams. And its failures. Or maybe the photographs are just about life, our life. Our failures and dreams. And memories. Of what life is. Or what we remember it as being.
I had no itinerary. I slept in campgrounds and asked local folks to recommend places where a photo can be found, to where their personal, visual or experiential soul was touched by the landscape or a place that allowed them to connect the past with the present, the old with the new.
Susan May Tell is an artist born in Manhattan, living there now. In between she also worked for major publications in places like Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Paris and New York. Her fine art work has been widely exhibited and collected: in the Smithsonian Museum’s Samuel Wagstaff Collection, solo museum exhibitions and acquired by Columbia University.
