At the beginning of 2008 my classmates and I sat waiting for the professor to pick town names out of a hat. Each of us would be assigned to tell a story of the town through pictures. I was assigned Kilvert, also known as Tablertown - a small village off of SR 329 in rural Athens County, Ohio. 

While I was to tell a story through pictures I was skeptical of the concept. It was this endeavor in Kilvert that led me to believe that the idea of pursuing a narrative with still photographs was to work against the medium's strengths. A fool's errand, even.

Kilvert was named after Coal Mine Operator Sam Kilvert. Tablertown was named for  founder Michael Tabler. In 1937, a tornado hit the town, causing death, damage, and an exodus that led to a sustained decrease in population. When these pictures were made there was a church, a community center, cemetary and just a few homes, aside from the abandoned coal mine.

Throughout multiple visits I was not exactly unwelcome in the town, but my camera was generally less welcome. Residents were wary of yet another photographer coming through to extract narratives and perpetuate stereotypes about rural Appalachia. Some of the residents allowed themselves to be photographed, graciously but often reluctantly. I did my best to be respectful. In revisiting this work, I have decided to hopefully better respect this sentiment by focusing just on the details of the place and the landscape.

In an early visit, a town elder proclaimed me unwise to attend graduate school at all, informing me that I would leave less educated than when I started. While I didn't then (and generally still don't) agree with her sentiment, I have often thought about it, especially given what has transpired in American politics since then. Having been in and out of academia in various roles through my life, I can say that I at least see her point.  

Instead of any sort of story about Kilvert, these pictures offer a surface rendering of a town that struggled after the cyclone, after extractivism, and punctuated by a recently and curiously abandoned home. They are a fragmented and wholly incomplete record of the place as it was in the winter and early spring of 2008, with a strong bias towards scenes that struck me as providing for an interesting photograph.