Rising Meadow Farm
Houck Medford | NC, United States
Photographer: Houck Medford
Exhibit Title: Rising Meadow Farm
Location: NC, United States
This is a true story. It celebrates what is right with the world.
Ann and Ron Fay are septuagenarian shepherds living on a 128-acre farm in Piedmont North Carolina. They met as students at the University of Vermont and have been devoted to each other ever since. They independently grew up in traditional New England families, Ann in Massachusetts, Ron in Vermont. “Goodness” was practiced virtue.
In their professional lives, they were engaged in private education – Ron as headmaster and Ann in a supportive role in the school’s administration. Like so many others their age, they were steeped in the tradition of living the American dream - to own your own home.
Owning a home to them was accumulating acreage which with each change in venue, there would be additional buildings – perhaps a barn, a chicken house, or even original historic structures. Eventually, the farm defined their living landscape.
The farm setting provided an in situ for raising three children and a place to live out in real time their cherished childhood memories.
My photography as an artform has been focused on stories of unsung others. Subject material is more about what is right with the world than what is wrong with the world. Photography helps me build community by giving those around me a different lens for understanding others and seeing the events around them. It also became a tool for introduction to individuals who would become good friends.
My propensity is for the black and white image. I learned that shades of gray and black more easily diminish the distraction of color and complicating backgrounds. When I do use color, it is with a short focal length to deemphasize the background or to emphasize light on the subject of interest.
My primary interest is of people who make their living and raise their families on the land. It is these farmers who have self-selected a life style that helps them to save the Planet.
Houck Medford, Southern Documentary Artist
email: houck.medford@gmail.com
website: http://houckmedford.com/
"Rising Meadow," a beautiful, handcrafted first edition (from Horse and Buggy Press, Durham, NC), comprised of seventy black and white photographs and twenty-two original poems that take their inspiration from the photographs, is an exquisitely orchestrated collaboration between photographer Houck Medford and poet Joseph Bathanti. "Rising Meadow" literally documents the seasons of the 128-acre working sheep farm, Rising Meadow Farm, in Randolph County, North Carolina, built and sustained by an intrepid, long-married couple, now in their eighties, shepherds Ron and Ann Fay. More than anything, "Rising Meadow" is a lasting, loving tribute to Ron and Ann, the beating heart of that farm and of this stunning book.
Purchase the book from the American Farmland Trust.
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