Mr.Turner, Turner's Mill 1974. Turner gave Jffers a personal tour of his mill in Edom, Va. just north of Harrisonburg.

From his very first Eastman Kodak Brownie Box camera with the sliding aperture and up-down, open-and-shut release lever, Jack Jeffers has spent a lifetime in photography and 55 years as a fine art photographer. His collection of Appalachian images began by accident in 1969 when he stumbled on a deserted mountain cabin south of Charlottesville, Va. He spent more than 40 years documenting the vanishing people and landscapes of the region with his 40-pound camera pack and mountain dog Rufus.

In 1972, Jeffers won his first best-in-show award at a large, juried all-media art show for “Mountain Man 1971” (in Waynesboro, Va., the exhibit drew artists from Washington, D.C. and three states).

Old Truck and Barn 1984. Jeffers came across this scene in Montebello, Va. just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. "The snow added the final element."

Since then, Jeffers has won top awards in many art shows and several thousand of his original silver images have been acquired by the likes of the Hershey Chocolate Co., John D. Rockefeller IV, Philip Morris USA, Eastman Kodak Co., Ferrum College, Carson-Newman College, Longwood University, Radford University, The Smithsonian Museum and the Virginia Historical Society.

Now retired, Jeffers lives with his wife, Pat, in Wyoming’s Wind River Country where he enjoys taking hikes, catching an occasional trout dinner and making traditional archery equipment.

Links:
www.radford.edu
www.jeffersfineart.com

Mikel Chaver's Interview With Jack Jeffers

MC: What is it about the mountain people that draws your artistic passion?

JJ: I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time with the mountain people. Until then, my work was dealing primarily with nature’s abstracts, so the timing of the mountain people was just perfect. When I walked into that deserted mountain cabin it was like, I just have to do this and follow this story to the end. I became 100 percent absorbed by this new challenge, to track down some of the few remaining inhabitants of the Blue Ridge.

This opened up additional avenues, and I expanded my collection with the addition of old disappearing farm scenes, and the old way of life in the Appalachians. I added short portfolios that included steam locomotives, coal mining, mail pouch tobacco and numerous other relics of the past. Much of what I documented has long since passed into oblivion.

MC: The story about the cabin that you stumbled upon while hiking near Charlottesville after a mudslide is very fascinating. Do you think it’s still there?

JJ: Most all of the old cabins I documented have long since disappeared. When the roof rots, the rest of the building rapidly follows, and many of those that I documented were gone within several years after I photographed them. I went back two years after my first photography session of “West Virginia Barn,” and it was already flat on the ground and covered with honeysuckle.

MC: You talk a lot in your articles about preserving the images that you make so that they will last for a very long time. Why is it important to you and why, personally, do you want people to remember the mountain people and other Appalachian relics you’ve made on film?

JJ: My reason for promoting longevity is because my work has historical value. Or, will have as time passes. I want my art to [be] around for future generations to enjoy. In addition, I have always competed with painters, and when I put a fine art price tag on one of my silver sulfide images, I want to be able to tell a customer that it will stand the test of time along side a painting. It will not fade away in several decades. You will be able to pass it down to your grand children and they to theirs.

I’ll tell you what really makes me feel like I’ve been around for a spell. For the past two or three years, I have been tracked down by a number of offspring who have inherited my work. Either their parents [are] elderly and are in nursing homes, or they have died.

I had a message from an elderly couple last week who had tracked me down on the internet, and they sent me a photograph of the four originals that have hung on their living room wall since the early seventies. It made my day, and they are still enjoying them. They simply wanted to share this with me. They live in the D.C. area.

MC: Do you have a strong connection with the people you come into contact with during the process? Does that contribute to your desire to preserve the images?

JJ: I did develop a lasting friendship with most of the mountain people I photographed. It took me a year to get to know [Cyrus Cash, a mountain man who lived in the mountains of western Nelson County, Va.], and I was finally able to capture his image. It took a full year. What really touched me was how he reacted to seeing his image in my book. And finally, after he died, one of his children wrote me a touching letter. It was terribly written, and I could hardly read it, but they wanted to tell me how much their father respected me, and that I was the only person he had ever allowed to make his photograph. Even they were not allowed to photograph him. This touched me deeply. He had made a point (as I was told) to show it to everyone in that mountain community. I can still picture that big grin on his face when I think back to the day that I took a book over to Cash Hollow and presented him with a copy.

And, of course… the shotgun he had hanging over his door. Many of the mountain people had a shotgun nearby.

Having grown up on a farm back in Southside Virginia in the early ’40s I could relate to the way the mountain people lived. I can remember as a child visiting my grandmother several times a year. In those days she had no power. You had to use an outdoor privy, and there was a bin of corn cobs beside the holes. One bin contained dark red cobs. The other contained white cobs. Use your imagination. And there was the old Sears catalog on a wooden shelf. I hated those things because they were so slick. Now that was real living back in the “good old days.” But what pleasant memories they bring back.

I also wore my old work clothes when I visited with the mountain folk. I did not come across as someone better than them. And I was interested in the same things that they were. In most every case, we hit it off just fine. And above all, I never removed my camera from the old wastebasket strapped to an old Boy Scout pack frame. I waited until things were right. Too bad that I could never photograph the wife of Cyrus, but it just was not in the cards. And I respected her wishes.

Nothing is worse than confronting someone with a large camera with a long lens. That is tantamount to pointing a cannon in their face. I know the feeling and the intimidation that it conveys.

I think every time I photographed a building, a person, or any type of farm operation, my images were somehow influenced by my early childhood experiences near Farmville, Va.

MC: What is it about the mountains that fuels your passion? A lot of people I’ve talked to say that they are more creative in an area that is beautiful to them, like the mountains are soothing to the spirit. Is it the same with you?

JJ: I have always loved the mountains. I spent every spare moment I had exploring the Appalachians, but I always had a strong desire to live out west. I even hitchhiked out here once following high school. But I could never get a job. So, the opportunity was presented to me again after Pat and I were married. In fact, she was the one who talked me into the move.

I tell people that out here we have the real mountains. You stand back and breath in the fresh high-country air and look up at the 13- and 14,000-foot snow-capped peaks and just say WOW. It makes my spine tingle. And I have made some fine images during the past 10 years of living in Wyoming. I refer to this portfolio as the “Wyoming Outback.” I seek out places that few, if any photographers, have ever documented. But that was how it was back east also.

MC: Do you feel most at “home” when in the mountains?

JJ: To fully document an area and create images that I am satisfied with, I must live there. You have to get to know the people and the land to capture it on film. It grows on you.

One of my favorite quotes (I think I saw it somewhere many decades ago) is, “Art comes from people, not from tools.”

Fine photographs do not pop out of the back of cameras as if by magic. They are made with lots of tender loving care. We use our brains to visualize a particular concept and often you must capture a concept on film at what many refer to as the “decisive moment.” This was true of the locomotive in the snow storm. Had I not made this one exposure at precisely the right moment, the image would have come and gone. There are often no second chances.

MC: You said you were not printing anymore. What exactly does that mean? Are you still out with your camera making photographs?

JJ: I stopped printing back in the spring. That means no more originals will ever be made. In fact, I am giving my lab and camera equipment to a nearby college [Casper College] for use in their photography department. There simply comes a time in a person’s life where their life-long interest has to come to an end. I have felt this coming for some time, but the latest move clinched it. I have so much work in storage that I can spend the rest of my life just dealing with what I have. Plus, I must have hundreds of mounted works that have never been matted.

I went through a period of frustration back in the early ’80s where I became stuck in a rut. I did not make an original for four years. Then, when I got back into it, my printing was the best it had ever been. There was a freshness once again. I think also, I get tired of dealing with so many people who still make negative comments about photography. Such as the Wyoming Artists Association. I end up spending more time educating than I do making originals. After a spell, that just gets frustrating.

MC: After reading your stories about art galleries and all the frustrations, I can certainly believe that the young generation wants the shock value more than the beauty of art. Take dance for example: there’s ballet and then there’s modern dance where dancers sometimes sit completely still for 10 minutes, then do something ridiculous like fling out an arm and that’s supposed to be artistic dance. Has the same thing happened in fine art photography? How does your work symbolize the opposite? Do you ever seek to represent the “good” side of art?

JJ: I have to laugh every time I see stuff like this. A blank canvas for instance. Where was the artist when he or she created a blank sky? We live in two different worlds.

But there was an article that appeared in Art Calendar several years ago titled “Everything is Art.” Well, maybe so, but…
I enjoy the gallery scene. And if you go to a city like Santa Fe, Jackson, Wyo. and numerous others and step into a multi media gallery, you see very little work that crosses the line of decency. At least in this part of the country. You see more of this in the academic world and places like New York. Freedom of expression is good, but where do you draw the line? Thirty years ago, I would never have dared submitting the portfolio I described above to any gallery or contest. I would have been run out of town. Certainly not to a magazine. My feelings have changed somewhat. I can admit that anything goes, but I don’t have to like it. My serious art still reflects my early years on the farm. Any way-out stuff is merely an exercise for me.

Personally, I feel that my work will stand the test of time, in more ways than one.

MC: About the photography galleries: you wrote in one of your articles about bringing the dignity back into art. Do you think your work portrays this dignity?

JJ: Yes! I would never photograph someone stretched out in a gutter. You will note that in all of my images of people, I captured the dignity of the individual. And I took a photograph back to every one of them. The expression on their faces told me whether or not they were happy with what they saw. Had they not been, I would have destroyed the print and the negative.

MC: Because your images (the Appalachian ones) are of a pretty much extinct medium do you think by seeing the old ways of life, people will come back to being dignified? Especially in art?

JJ: After what I have seen during the past 30 years, I would have to say that things sure have changed since my early days in photography. We are living in times where anything goes. You read my article, “Is it Art?” [2003] That is sensationalism at is highest level. People swarm to these shows like flies around a gory car crash.

When I was growing up, there were boundaries, and you never even considered crossing the line. Today, you can get away with most anything when it comes to art. Sensationalism has won over decency. You can never turn the pages back to the old days.

I have never joined the ranks of those who depend on sensationalism for success. I know that in order to make the big time scene that I should do so, but I have not, and I will not. I have joked to my wife Pat many times about playing a joke on the art world. Like going out and producing a portfolio on Wyoming Road Kills – the fresher the better – and submitting it to a big juried museum show. In fact, I did something just as dramatic 30 years ago as an “exercise.”

MC: Would you say that you have an eye for raw, natural beauty? An eye for capturing it?

JJ: Yes, I always have. That is the real me! Every image is an honest interpretation of the world around me. Through the art of photography, I might even enhance it a bit through traditional processes.