Beyond Stereotypes in California and Kentucky
William Gedney once said he was not “a social problem photographer.” Working in places like Appalachia and Northern California, he challenged preconceived notions to find enduring — and unexpected — images.
Urban California and rural Appalachia were amply documented in the 1960s, even if the usual narratives were often polar opposites: the Bay Area, with its free-loving, psychedelic hippie counterculture or Kentucky with its gritty backwoods scenes of despair and poverty.