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Black Diamonds

$125.00

Black Diamonds is a personal endeavor to connect with the Appalachian region Facun now calls home. As a person of color, he defines his community based on personal experience, which diverges from the stereotypes of race, religion, gender, and politics that are often attached to the region by outsiders. His images hint at life as it once was, sharing the hyperrealism of what it is today and the uncertainty of what it is to become in the coal mining boomtowns of bygone days. Life in Appalachia is fraught with mystery and mischaracterization. Yet, in all his interactions, the simple needs of day-to-day survival loom larger than the abstract issues of politics. The images strive for an understanding of people and place in these rural, isolated foothills pocked with poverty; where a heritage of hospitality, not hate, is an unspoken psalm.

Black Diamonds is a personal endeavor to connect with the Appalachian region Facun now calls home. As a person of color, he defines his community based on personal experience, which diverges from the stereotypes of race, religion, gender, and politics that are often attached to the region by outsiders. His images hint at life as it once was, sharing the hyperrealism of what it is today and the uncertainty of what it is to become in the coal mining boomtowns of bygone days. Life in Appalachia is fraught with mystery and mischaracterization. Yet, in all his interactions, the simple needs of day-to-day survival loom larger than the abstract issues of politics. The images strive for an understanding of people and place in these rural, isolated foothills pocked with poverty; where a heritage of hospitality, not hate, is an unspoken psalm.

 

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Rich-Joseph Facun is an Otomí and Pinoy storyteller, photographer, and bookmaker presently based in the Appalachian Foothills of southeast Ohio. His work aims to offer an authentic look into ways in which individual identity is influenced by the economic, geographic, and community norms of a given landscape. The exploration of place and cultural identity present themselves as a common denominator in both his life and his photographic endeavors.

DETAILS

10 x 11 in | 25.4 x 27.94 cm, Hardcover

Debossed, Foil Stamp, Smyth Sewn

128 pages with 60 color plates, 3 historical plates

Essays by Alison Stine & Rich-Joseph Facun

Design Direction: Megan Fowler

ISBN 978-1-7348312-1-4

First Edition of 1,100

Published September 2021

By Fall Line Press

REVIEWS

“Facun's resulting survey of Appalachia doesn't reduce the region to its politics, but instead is an exercise in making connections and understanding his home.” 

Jacqui Palumbo, CNN