Nethers Post Office

a still from the film, Rothstein's First Assignment

Rothstein's cover image for his book

Originally I had thought Rothstein's First Assignment might be a re-photographic project. Something along the lines of Mark Klett and William Christenberry's work. I was intrigued by the idea that almost all of Rothstein's sites were now part of a National Park. Instead of the usual routine of documenting the encroachment of development, I thought it might be interesting to document the transformation of previously inhabited land back to 'pristine wilderness.' The whole idea of returning land back to nature seemed problematic. I felt it to be based on what is called, "The Pristine Myth." The false conception we have regarding the origins of much of America. A belief that largely denies the existence of Native Americans.

I started with the Nethers Post Office. The cover image for Rothstein's own book on the depression (see above). I had originally hoped that the building would still be there, but it wasn't. While looking for where it had been, I saw Mr Dodson out in his yard next door. I asked him if the empty lot next to his house was where the Nethers PO had been. He confirmed that it was and told me that his grandfather was in the cover Post Office image. In fact he told me, his brother has the old PO sign. That was how I secured my first interview for the project. The turning point for Rothstein's First Assignment becoming a film.

another Rothstein image of Nethers Post Office

There were a couple of things about Rothstein's photograph that seemed odd to me, even then. If you look closely at the boy in the back picture he's blurred from moving too much. This indicates a slow shutter speed. Everything else is sharp. Also in the top right you can see Rothstein's hand blocking the light from producing flare on the lens. Because of the buildings orientation, he's shooting almost into the sun. These details show that Rothstein didn't shoot this image with a Leica as he talks about in the Richard Doud interview, but with a large format camera on a tripod. The image is clearly staged as even John Dodson would later attest.

Rothstein took a number of photographs of the Post Office. Other images have different people. In some there's a man reading a paper. Some are even taken with a 35mm camera, but the most important were produced with this large format camera.

Rothstein 35mm image of Nethers Post Office

The Nether's Post Office was clearly important to his assignment. In trying to understand this I looked it up at the Prints and Photographs division at the Library of Congress. There the Nether's PO image is simply filed with all the other Post Office photos. The imporatance being that it is a Post Office. But that doesn't begin to tell the whole story of why Rothstein spent so much time there. It wasn't until I found an archival film which also documented the Post Office that I would begin to understand the true reason that Rothstien spent so much time at the Nethers Post Office. The film largely anticipates Rothstein's assignment. Produced before his arrival, it documents many of the same people Rothstein would later photograph. It also tells a story that Rothstein is silent on.

Constructing Documentary Truth

The questions I set out to explore with this film revolved around our ideas about documentary truth. Simply put, I was concerned about how documentaries are produced to depict truth. Do documentaries reveal truth or do they construct it?

This question had become especially problematic when I started making films. For me it seemed the only true documentary would be one made with a continuous take. Like the early films of Edison and Lumiere where they just turned on the camera and let it run. To me this was truth. But that was before montage, that was before films came to be constructed. It was before Edison realized he could make money from films.

And that for me was where a documentary's claim to truth breaks down. When you put two different splices of film together who's to know that they have any relationship to each other that constitutes truth? How do you know if the first splice happened before or after the second splice? The whole continuity of a film is an illusion. It only exists in the viewer's mind.

Edison's Film, The Sneeze

Not that the still photographer isn't is without their own problems. For me the most problematic documentary aspect of still photography is that of framing. How does a photographer decide what to put in the frame and what to leave out? How do they decide who to photograph and who not to photograph? What detail is important and which one is not?

To think a documentary photographer just documents the situation is not how it works. Documentary photographers are sent to document a story that has usually been written before they arrive on the scene. If the story doesn't fit what they find (which is often the case), they have ways of making it work. They are not there to contradict the story they have been sent to get. Otherwise they'd soon be out of business. Like their film counterparts, documentary photographers construct their photo essays.

So at the beginning of this project, I was interested in how Rothstein constructed his story from the reality that was presented to him. I knew going into this that Rothstein's story did not fit how the locals saw themselves. Rothstein's story of poverty and illiteracy was a cherry picked truth. It didn't tell the whole story of the mountain people. It wasn't their story, it was an outsider's story. As I was told at the Madison Historical Society, 'Rothstein took his photographs to make everyone look poor.'

Not that anyone doubted there were poor people in the mountains. There were. Madison County already had in place a local welfare system of sorts to deal with the problem. The poor just weren't the majority of the population. As Jimmy Brown put it, it was like going to New York City and photographing Harlem in the midst of its poverty, and then using those photographs to define all the inhabitants of Manhattan. It wasn't the truth.

So I set up a series of formal devices to explore Rothstein's assignment to look at documentary structural issues, devices that came to comprise the basic structure of the film, and I decided not to construct my truth but to find it. I wanted to see what my subjects would give me and see how it fit with the traditional narrative. My only boundaries were to stay within Rothstein's assignment. All I would bring to my interviews would be Rothstein's photographs. I wanted my subjects to reveal their truth as it related to Rothstein's photographs.

On the left is Blanche with an unidentified child. Rothstein identifies her as Mrs Nicholson. On the right is Sam Corbin. Sam and Blanche are sister and brother and they are posing in front of the same house, probably at the same time (with one of the same children ). The camera is a large format camera, not a leica as is evidenced by the frame and the light leaks.



What I didn't expect to find was a story behind the story of Rothstein's first assignment. That Rothstein's story was not only a misrepresentation of the area in which he was photographing, but that it also was probably not the story he was sent to document. About half way through the film I started to find that there was another secret, incredibly sinister story behind the official narrative. A story that I had never heard, nor read about. A story most of the mountain people had never heard about either.

To understand that story I had to study the book Hollow Folk. Hollow Folk is a book that at the time was considered to be an important scientific study. Published in 1933 if focuses largely on the same people Rothstein would later photograph. Though now discredited, it provides an important window into the narrative that must have guided Rothstein.

The Apple Vendor and the Cliser Eviction

Apple Vendor Arthur  Rothstein Oct 1935

Cliser eviction Oct 1935

One the left, the Cliser Eviction photographed Oct 1935 by the Park. On the right an Apple Vendor photographed in October of 1935 by Arthur Rothstein. Both photographs were taken on Lee Highway near what would become the entrance to the Park.



When I began Rothstein's First Assignment (RFA), I looked for writings that Rothstein had left on this first assignment of his career. Rothstein was known for leaving type written notes on many of his assignments. Erol Morris's blog has an example of Rothstein's notes on his famous Dust Storm image. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock/.

I went to the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division to see if there were any notes on Rothstein's assignment in Shenandoah National Park in October of 1935. I found the dust storm notes, but Rothstein left no notes until about six months after his premiere assignment. I asked Beverly Brannon, curator at the Prints and Photographs, why no notes. She explained that in the beginning things were too chaotic and since the assignment was so close to Washington, there weren't any notes. I checked with the Roy Stryker archives in Louisville, KY and the archivist there also said that Roy Stryker, Rothstein's boss, also hadn't left any notes on this assignment. I even went to a collection of Rothstein's materials downstairs from the Prints and Photographs Department. Nothing there either. About the only thing I could find was the Richard Doud interview recorded in NYC in the 60s, which wasn't much help either.

So I went to the historical record to try to get a sense of the situation. I wanted to know what things were like when Rothstein went up into the mountains. The thing that I found that struck me was the Cliser eviction. On Oct 3, 1935 there was a well publicized eviction near the entrance to the Park. Melachnton Cliser, who owned a gas station, was resisting being moved from the park. More than that he was protesting it. He was talking to the press and writing his congressmen. The locals were behind him and he was starting to get a lot of press.

Since Rothstein's assignment also occured in October of 1935, I thought he might of taken a picture of the eviction. Some type of record even if he arrived too late to capture the actual eviction. Since he was working for what was known as the Resettlement Administration, it seemed the Cliser eviction would be something that he would photograph. But he didnt.

Oddly I found that he did photograph an apple vendor on the same road nearby. This meant he had to have passed by the Cliser site. Why photograph an apple vendor, which had nothing to do with Resettlement, but then not photograph a man whom the government was evicting from his land? To me this seemed more important to the government agency he was working for. After all the Park photographed the Cliser eviction. For some reason it wasn't part of the story Rothstein was sent to document.

Cecil Brown, the Roman Coliseum and Fennel

Cecil Brown with Coliseum photograph in background

Cecil's interview was another instance of one thing leading to another. When I had interviewed his relative, Jimmy Brown, Jimmy told me that Cecil had the photograph of the Roman Coliseum in Rothstein's portrait of his grandfather, Postmaster Brown. That was my original intention for interviewing Cecil. Since with John Dodson, I had located the sign for the Nethers Post Office, I thought that adding the photograph of the Coliseum to the mix would give a re-photographic texture to my film.

Postmaster Brown   A Rothstein

It also seemed odd to me that someone who was described as poor would have such a large and wonderful photograph of the Coliseum in 1935. To my mind this indicated education and something beyond poverty. It contradicted the narrative I was familiar with, that all the mountain residents were poor and uneducated. Not to mention Postmaster Brown is posing with a book in Rothstein's photograph.

Mrs Dyer with child  A Rothstein

What I didn't know was that Cecil had guided Rothstein up into the mountians to take his photographs of Mrs Dyer and her children. This came up when I was showing Cecil, Rothstein's book of photographs. When we came to the page with the caption reading 'Mrs Dodson,' he corrected the book and preceded to tell us his story of taking Rothstein to the Dyer home. He didn't remember much about Rothstein. All he could remember was the car that he drove. He agreed to take Rothstein up into the mountains just to get a ride in the car.
That change in identification would later prove important when I went to look up the records, though I didnt understand it at the time. It would also explain Rothstein's curious edit of the this family's images. When looked at as a whole, Rothstein's images of this family tell us a very different story.

Another story came up when we got to Rothstein's picture of Fennel Corbin. The first thing Cecil said about Fennel is that he had shot a man. Its a bit of local lore that Fennel shot and killed a Dodson boy. Everyone seems to have their own version of this story, even Pollock, the owner of Skyland. Cecil's version seems to combine two stories of shootings in Corbin Hollow as Fennel couldn't have been old enough to serve in the Civil war. Yet Cecil's version tells much about Fennel's reputation in the community. Fennel's family seems to have been the poorest in the neighborhood and his neighbors had various responses to that poverty.

Fennel as photographed by Rothstein

Fennel from A Trip to Skyland

What was intriguing to me was how much media attention Fennel's family got for their poverty. They were featured in the film, Trip to Skyland and Shenandoah National Park. They were at the center of the book, Hollow Folk. The Park photographed them both before and after Rothstein's visit and there are even audio recordings of the family made in 1937. Not to mention the newspaper articles in The Washington Post and the New York Times. That Rothstein spent most of his time photographing just this extended family clearly wasn't accidental. It was more likely preordained. The key to this media attention of course was Miriam Sizer.

Who Was With Rothstein on His Assignment?

Arthur Rothstein

In doing my research before setting out, I came across Paula Rabinowitz's "Voyeurism and Class Consciousness: James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The article raised a number of questions for me. Most notably, what was Rothstein's relationship to his subjects? We often think that Rothstein just stumbled across his subjects. That like a city street photographer he came across his subjects in his random walks in the mountains. Rothstein largely makes that claim in the Richard Doud interview.

"I went out there and was in a cabin on the top of a mountain for a few weeks, walked around and became acquainted with these people. At the beginning they were very shy about having pictures taken, but I would carry my camera along and make no attempt to take pictures. "

Oral history interview with Arthur Rothstein, 1964 May 25, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

But I sensed that that wasn't the case. As a photographer myself, I felt that someone must have arranged for him to photograph the people that he did.  It made no sense that he could've have found his subjects on his own.   He was twenty years old and by his own admission had rarely been outside of New York City.

Rothstein's assignment reminded me of an assignment I had done in Nepal on AIDS/HIV. In this situation, even though I had gone to school in Nepal and was familiar with it, I was dependent on an NGO (non government organization) to lead me to my subjects. Though I  didn't usually photograph them, a social worker was always present while I worked. I was dependent on my subjects relationship to this NGO to get my photographs for the story.  

So I was curious, who was with Rothstein on his assignment? What was their relationship to his subjects? Did it reflect the same sense of class consciousness that Rabinowitz writes about? At first I thought Rabinowitz overstated things. After all, the FSA narrative suggests Rothstein was there to help the poor. Indeed the Washington Post article that was published with Rothstein's photographs is titled,  Government Moves Mountain Residents from 19th century to 20th century.  

But then I realized the proximity of Rothstein's subjects to the elite resort, Skyland, and I began to question my assumptions. There clearly was a relationship between the poor residents of Corbin Hollow and their rich politically powerful neighbors nearby. A relationship that had been developing for over thirty years before Rothstein showed up. Many Corbin Hollow residents worked at Skyland and there were also Corbin Hollow residents who begged at the resort.

In my interviews I heard many stories about the financial relationship of Corbin Hollow residents and the resort Skyland.  Some residents cleared trails and supplied firewood for the resort. Other residents even sold  George Pollock rattlesnakes for his famous snake dance.  And there were the begging boards that poor residents used to ask for money.   Everyone it seemed had a financial relationship to Pollock and his resort.

Eddie Nicholson home 1933 or 1934

Eddie Nicholson 1935 (Rothstein)

There also was a curious photograph in Audrey Horning's book, In the Shadow of Ragged Mountain. In the chapter on Corbin Hollow there is a picture that shows a group of 'outsiders' visiting Corbin Hollow. This picture was significant to me because it showed what is normally cropped out of a picture, the photographer and the 'others' who are with him. Instead of the normal framing, it showed a group of men with a
photographer, probably Dr Sexton, visiting Eddie Nicholson's house and filming his wife, Blanche. You can see Sexton leaning over in the foreground looking into his viewfinder.


When I finally tracked this image down at the Park's Archives in Luray, the caption on the back said they were visiting the 'Hollow Folk,' a direct reference to the book Hollow Folk. It spoke volumes to me about the relationship between Corbin Hollow residents and their benefactors. It was starting to look like Rabinowitz was right. When I realized that Rothstein had gone up to that same house less than three years later and photographed Eddie Nicholson sitting on the back porch I wondered,  could he have been accompanied by a similar entourage?

I found my answer in a Washington Post Article published on November 3, 1935. In a feature article, Rothstein’s photographs are used in what is presumably his first published piece.  Titled, Blue Ridge Hillbillies Get a Transfer-From 19^th to 20^th Century, the article by Virginia Warren highlights the upcoming Resettlement of mountain residents to make way for the Park. 

Warren’s article provides a clear idea of how Rothstein worked. She tells us that she was accompanied by, ‘a Rural Resettlement Official, a photographer and a reporter for a great British newspaper.’[1] With the added information that they had a guide, the local school teacher, Warren presents us with scenario similar to what we see in the Sexton photograph.

 

Like Hollow Folk, Warren’s article focuses on the same extended Corbin Hollow family.  At times paraphrasing the book, Warren’s article is clearly influenced by it.  She even repeats the odd assertion that the happiness of Corbin Hollow residents is a sign of their backwardness.   Though she changes the names from the book, names that have already been changed by Hollow Folk’s authors, it is clear that she is talking about the same people.  ‘Mazie,’ a central figure in Hollow Folk becomes ‘Mattie’ and is likewise central in Warren’s article.  She is also central to Rothstein’s archive on this project.  

Yet in her description of Rothstein’s working situation, Warren seems to contradict Rothstein.    From Rothstein’s description we are led to believe that his selection criteria was random and that he was alone.  But with Warren’s article it’s clear that the Corbins essentially all lived next door to one another in upper Corbin Hollow.  In her article Warren describes going door to door in what appears to be an organized tour, 
 

 “The party halted at every cabin in the vicinity…[1]” 

Further contradicting Rothstein’s account, this ‘party’ has been set up to promote the Resettlement Project and had gone so far as to invite a foreign reporter.  In sharp contrast to Rothstein’s description, his subjects were part of a display that had been selected for him to photograph.

Indeed it would have been difficult for Rothstein to get to know the Corbins. There were a limited number of outsiders who could venture into Corbin Hollow.  Outsiders needed an introduction to the community, they reportedly could not wander in freely. Additionally Rothstein would have had difficulty communicating with his subjects.  They were well known to have an Old English dialect.  Only one outsider, Miriam Sizer, is reported to have learned this dialect.[2] That Rothstein could have just wandered around and gotten to know this extended Corbin Hollow family contradicts Warren’s article and all other accounts I could find. 

 

But even Warren’s article is wrong on its most basic point. The residents of Corbin Hollow did not participate in the Resettlement Project. Despite all comments to the contrary, the Corbin’s were not moved to any of the Resettlement camps.  Though the government still characterizes Rothstein’s project as,

 ‘to document the lives of some Virginia farmers who were being evicted to make way for the Shenandoah National Park and about to be relocated by the Resettlement Administration,’ [3]

this was not what happened.   

The Corbin’s were not even farmers.  Though Rothstein does photograph a number of farms in the region, they have no known connection to the Corbin Families at the center of his project.  That he photographs these farms and not the farmers who worked them is curious.[4] Given the characterization of Rothstein’s project by the government, it seems Rothstein’s photographs of these farms are meant to imply falsely that these were Rothstein’s subjects farms.        

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[1] Ibid.

[2] A recording I found of one of Rothstein’s subjects, ‘Mazie,’ made in 1937, makes clear that Rothstein could not have understood her.  This recording was made by UVA Professors Atcheson Hench and Archibald Hill and has Miriam Sizer doing the interview. 

[3] Documenting America.  Tenant Farmers. Library of Congress.  memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap05.html. Accessed May 26, 2013.

[4] Further complicating this issue is the Via Case where a group of Apple Orchard owners were contesting the condemnation of their land to build the Park.  At the time of Rothstein’s project this case was before the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court ultimately chose not to review their case.   

   

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[1] Warren, Virginia Lee.  Blue Ridge Hillbillies Get a Transfer -- From 19th to 20th Century

The Washington Post. Nov 3, 1935

[2] For reasons that are not entirely clear, the authors of Hollow Folk changed the names of both the locations and their residents.

Hollow Folk and the Objective Observer

One of the most troubling aspects I confronted in making Rothstein's First Assignment was the myth of the objective observer.  In both Rothstein's depictions of his subjects and  Hollow Folk's findings about the same subjects, the presence of those 'documenting' residents of Corbin Hollow is cloaked in a shroud of invisibility.  The assumption of those doing the  documentation is that their presence does not impact the events they are studying.  The writers of Hollow Folk are detached scientists,  Rothstein is using an 'unobtrusive camera. '  We are given a story and a set of photographs in which the creators are absent. 

The actual theory behind Hollow Folk was especially troubling in its misuse of the idea of objectivity.   In the five Hollows that are 'studied' by its authors, it is reasoned that Corbin Hollow is the most backward (poor) because of its isolation from society.   That Corbin Hollow's current state of affairs can be explained by its isolation from society. 

Yet the idea that Corbin Hollow was the most backward mountain community in the area due to its location ignores the fact that Pollock's resort, Skyland, was right next to Corbin Hollow.  At the time of the writing of Hollow Folk, Corbin Hollow had a long established relationship to Skyland.   Some families had been employed by Pollock for decades,  while others had traditionally sold him firewood, moonshine and even snakes for his famous snake dance. 

Though Hollow Folk notes this employment of Corbin Hollow residents by Skyland, it does not take its influence on the community into account.  Perhaps because Miriam Sizer and other researchers stayed at Skyland, Hollow Folk extends its objective observer status to Pollock's resort thereby maintaining its central thesis of Corbin Hollow's isolation.  

George Pollock in A Trip to Skyland

An equally plausible explanation of Corbin Hollow's problems could actually be the presence of Skyland. Indeed when the depression hit, Skyland stopped providing the income Corbin Hollow residents had come to rely on.  George Pollock reduced his employment of Corbin Hollow residents as his resort lost business.  Since  many Corbin Hollow residents no longer  farmed, they had become dependent on this income to obtain food and other necessities.  As there were few if any alternative sources of income in the mountains, Corbin Hollow residents quickly descended into poverty with the advent of the depression.  In Audrey Horning's book, In the Shadow of Ragged Mountain, she notes a FERA report published in 1935 that recognizes this connection. 

Skyland Guest Dressed as an Indian (Native American)

To display this issue of objectivity in the film, I placed some writings from Hollow Folk with some archival footage from the film, A Trip to Skyland and Shenandoah National Park.   I did it in reverse to display that Hollow Folks authors could just as well be talking about themselves and other guests at Skyland.

Skyland Guests from A Trip to Skyland.

Pollocks parties at Skyland worked well to illustrate Hollow Folk.  In another instance of role reversal -a major theme that runs throughout Rothstein's First Assignment; I found that I could easily recast Pollock's guests as the subjects of Hollow Folk.  Pollock's costumed parties more clearly 'illustrated' the authors 'long journey from primitive ways of living to modern social order,'  than did the residents of the five hollows they were studying.  Even Pollock's famous snake dance reflected a common stereotype of the region, that of religious snake handling.

Fennel's Bed

Fennel sitting on his bed as photographed by Rothstein in 1935

Fennel's Bed in the Park in 2010

It was difficult to find the sites in the park where Rothstein had taken his pictures. There were many ruins, but after 75 years and a major fire much of the remains were gone. It wasn't until the end of my project that I was able to find the site of Fennel's home.  With an old USGS map of the park showing where the home sites had been and the current Potomac Appalachian Trail Club map, I was finally able to determine where Rothstein took his photographs. 

I was startled to find Fennel's bed still on site in the Park. After 75 years, his bed was still there and only about 10 yards from where Rothstein had photographed him sitting on it. There was a lot of stuff still at the site. Much more than at other sites I had visited. I saw remains of a cast iron cookstove, pieces of leather from an old shoe, and shards of pottery from coffee cups. There was even a second bed. I'm not sure who owned the second bed.  But it might of been Dicie's as it was close to Fennel's.  

Finding the beds troubled me, why would someone move and not take their bed? Whenever you see someone move, they always take their bed. Considering Fennel was poor, it didn't seem to me likely he would leave his cast iron bed behind if he could help it. Instead it confirmed what information I had already found. Namely that Fennel had no choice on where he went when he was moved out of the park. It seems pretty clear that he wasn't resettled like Rothstein's caption said. Documents I found indicated he had been institutionalized. 

Photographing Fennel's bed in the Park felt like photographing a crime scene.   Fennel did not benefit from the government program Rothstein's image of him was used to promote.  Though his image was used to promote Appalachian Culture, the Appalachian Culture of which he was a part was destroyed when they made the Park.   For all these years his fate has largely been kept secret.  Family members tell me they don't even know where he is buried.