TRUE MEANING OF PICTURES (MERCURY FILMS, 2002)

By Rick Jackson

Directed by award‑winning documentary filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal, The True Meaning Of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia is an absorbing and interesting account of a unique culture in the United States. Adams, who has been chronicling the life of Appalachia for over thirty years, has met with controversy over his pictures but it has not stopped him from portraying a people whose lives he sees as a vital part of Americana. The only way he feels he can do this is by letting you share in a living experience through his collection of pictures.

Throughout this documentary, you see him set up the pictures and are shown the end result. These are not phony Hollywood settings which surprises and shocks you when art critics are divided at the veracity of these pictures. Adams' photographs have been unfairly stereotyped as hillbilly and perpetuating the Hollywood myth of the aforementioned people in Kentucky, thanks in large part to films like director John Boorman's now classic Deliverance (1972).

One critic even suggests Adams' picture of an old woman with a pipe in her mouth is a straight copy right out of a Li'l Abner cartoon strip. Watching the story unfold before your very eyes, you know this is simply not true. Both sides tell their story with alarming alacrity and thanks to Baichwal's efforts in celebrating Shelby's collection of pictures, you are able to see firsthand there really exists such a people in Appalachia.

The experience of seeing the holiness people, a sect of the Pentecostal church who literally believe and practice the Book of Mark in what is called "serpent handling religion" brings home the sincerity and devotion of Adams' work as a photographer.

Trusted by everyone, he is able to return again and again to put together as a participant,
the celebration of lives lived. You see this in countless examples of their emotional and financial hardships to individual episodes of their daily lives. This is their true meaning, and Baichal's exploration of Adams's work brings this to light in an invigorating and entertaining way.

February 22, 2003