Nowhere Newsletter 02: Black Diamonds
A Photography Book from the Appalachian Foothills of SE Ohio: by Rich-Joseph Facun
I recently discovered this beautiful photography book project on Kickstarter from Rich-Joseph Facun called Black Diamonds.
Rich-Joseph Facun is a photographer of Indigenous Mexican and Filipino descent. His work aims to offer an authentic look into endangered, bygone, and fringe cultures—those transitions in time where places fade but people persist. The exploration of place, community and cultural identity present themselves as a common denominator in both his life and photographic endeavors.
Black Diamonds is a personal endeavor, an effort to connect with and understand the region Rich-Joseph now calls home - the Appalachia Foothills of SE Ohio. As a person of color, he defines his community based on personal experience, which diverges from the stereotypes of race, religion, gender, and politics that can be attached to the area by outsiders.
When violence across the nation is aimed at specific groups of people, his images ask implicitly: Am I accepted in this community? Am I safe here?
The book is also a visual narration hinting at life as it once was, sharing the hyperrealism of what it is today and the uncertainty of what it is to become in a post-coal era.
These communities, pieces of a whole, are the former coal mining boomtowns of bygone days. The era of coal-fired prosperity was short lived, lasting roughly 50 years from 1870-1920. After draining the mountains of their bounty and the people of their power, the industry moved on—but the heritage remains.
Life in Appalachia is fraught with mystery and mischaracterization; marginalized or otherwise stereotyped as little more than “Trump Country.” Yet, in all his interactions, that name has never once been invoked—in this place, the simple needs of day-to-day survival loom larger than the abstract issues of politics.
His work is experiential and a visual exploration of place, community and cultural identity in a polarized political climate and racially divided era in the US. The images strive for an understanding of people and place through daily goings-on.
In these rural isolated foothills, pocked with poverty, these facets of Appalachia coexist with one another. A heritage of hospitality, not hate, is an unspoken psalm.
Black Diamonds is, if such a thing were possible, a punch to the gut, heart, eye, and brain. When Rich-Joseph Facun, a world-traveled artist, landed to live with his family in this special little corner of Ohio’s historic and shaken Appalachian coal country, it was as if the scales fell from his eyes and he saw it fresh in a way no one has before. This is not ‘parachute in’ work. This is the careful, deliberate, absorb it like a biscuit soaked in molasses kind of work that few are given to see and can only come from being there, after having been to many other places. Fall Line Press has waited for just this kind of project to express the love we feel for the people from this region and what it has lost and what it has to gain. Rich has made a book for the ages with this work. I wish James Agee and Mr. Evans could see this book - they would love it. Thank you to all who get behind it and help create its pathway to the future. We’ll all be glad you did.
William Boling, Publisher, Fall Line Press
I strongly encourage you to support Black Diamonds on Kickstarter as I believe this will be an absolutely amazing photography book in print.
Rewards include:
First edition copy of Black Diamonds
Postcards
Special Edition Print
Collector’s Print
Rich-Joseph Facun Folio
Print Folio
Year long mentor/editing session with Rich-Joseph Facun