Tomatoes, from the Breaking Ground series, 2019-present, wet plate collodion tintype

Join us for an evening with photographer Joshua White. Selection from White's tintype photography series, Breaking Ground, is featured in the exhibition Field Studies: Ways of Knowing Place in Southern Appalachia. For the past seven years Joshua White has spent time with families living and working on small-scale farms in western Watauga County. The resulting series, Breaking Ground, documents people, fields, tools, structures, animals, and the rhythms of labor that shape life close to the land. 

About the Artist

Josh White artist photo, courtesy of the artist

Born in southeastern Indiana, award-winning banjo player Joshua White had no idea he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. He can remember running through corn fields and playing with lawn darts, and was nearly arrested for the attempted trafficking of endangered turtles at a young age. He watched his brother shoot a bumblebee with a bb gun (he’s pretty sure it was an accident) and almost got run over by a train after swimming in the Ohio River with his friends, Chris and Timmy. White employs numerous techniques to investigate memory, mortality, narrative, ecology, and place. His work has been published in National Geographic and featured by Wired, Mother Nature Network, and Scientific American. His exhibition record includes numerous solo exhibitions across the US, as well as many national and international juried exhibitions. Joshua teaches photography at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC.