Jesse Barber

Today is a very special day as not only do we have a new podcast for you, it is also the 30th birthday of our guest, Jesse Barber. Happy birthday to Jesse, who is inquisitive, thoughtful, and talented, and has so much wisdom to share here.

Jesse is a documentary photographer based in the Appalachian region of North Carolina. His work focuses on the culture of rural communities and the influence of traditional values, such as those related to labor and religion. Raised in the rural South, Barber has an understanding of the nuanced perspective in small communities, and he seeks to expand our understanding of how religion, labor and history intersect with the land today. His work has been published in outlets such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and has won countless awards. A graduate student of Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University, Jesse also works with SouthArts on documentary, fieldwork, and ethnographic projects.

Photos by Jesse Barber.

Today’s conversation is about home, and about the struggle to find it. It is about Appalachia and the stories that surround this region. How a few menial drawn up lines have come to define so much of this country, and so many of our own identities within it.

Appalachia, as many of you who listen to this podcast will know, is many things. Most of all, for a lot of us, it is home. It is a place both beautiful and heartbreaking, both progressive and stuck in history. Folklore has contributed deeply to the myth of the region, as have journalists, who have long flocked to the mountains looking for a glimpse of the “real America”. This county has spent decades scapegoating the region, casting it aside, and leaving it behind. But in turn, those who call it home have come together to fight back and rewrite that story.

I come from a family with long roots in the Appalachian foothills, and for me, it has always felt like home, though a claim to this place still holds on my tongue. There is nowhere I have loved more, nor run away from so fast, a pattern that has tracked its way throughout my family line, all of us looking for better opportunity, better ways of life, somewhere else. In many ways, all of us are still looking for that home.

Jesse articulates so many of the things I have long felt, and I’m just grateful our paths have crossed. He sheds light on this place, not trying to make it something else, but simply showing it as it is. Like Appalachia itself, it’s beautiful. It’s heartbreaking. It’s home.