Searching for beauty and capturing striking images in the industrial ugliness and desolation of the Tennessee watershed — including the remnants of the infamous toxic ash spill that swallowed an East Tennessee community — is the sole focus of photographer Jeff Rich’s most recent collection: The Watershed Project.
Rich has spent the last six years researching and photographing the Southeastern Mississippi River basin. His most recent work in the project brought him to Tennessee to capture all the small pieces that make up the Tennessee River basin.
This system of rivers is for the most part controlled by the Tennessee Valley Authority — a federally funded corporation that provides for flood control, navigation on the rivers, economic development and — as Tennessee electric consumers know — power production.
The TVA operates around 50 dams in the Tennessee watershed — several of which Rich visited to photograph.
“One of the things about The Watershed Project in general is showing the complexities of our relationship with the land,” Rich said. “A lot of this work is just research — researching for six months at a time, then going out and shooting for about a week at a time.”
The Savannah College of Art alumnus set out to not only research the French Broad, Tennessee and lower Mississippi watersheds but also capture them in a new way.
Rich uses an 8×10 large format film camera to capture the ridges of land and dams of impounded water. But in order to compose the shot with his large format camera, he first makes a sketch with a digital camera.
“I jump out [of the car], take a bunch of shots with digital camera just to see what shots work so I don’t have to lug the camera around everywhere.”
While Rich admits that his subjects are not the prettiest of all, he said he has the opportunity to make the images more compelling.
“For me, to make a beautiful image is not only my basic interest as a photographer, but also I want to grab people and catch their attention,” Rich said. “Essentially, I don’t want to make an ugly photograph of an ugly thing, because it’s sort of a cliche.”
With this unique opportunity, Rich has covered portions of seven states, tracing the prominent dams of Appalachia all the way to the Ohio River.
During a trip to Emory River in Kingston, Tennessee, Rich met the only man who was still living in the area after a coal ash spill in 2008. That spill generated national headlines and concerns about the way the nation’s largest public utility — TVA — operates.
On Dec. 22, 2008, a drainage trench of a containment pond ruptured and as a result 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash was released into the surrounding countryside. It has been called the worst-ever environmental disaster of its kind and forced neighbors to leave their peaceful, lakeside community.
Most environmental groups have examined and complained about the accident that swallowed homes as it left a whole community and surrounding land covered up by six feet of coal ash.
The TVA has purchased most of the homes and private property covered in the chemical-filled sludge.
The only man still living on that strip of land is Glenn Daniel — the subject of one of Rich’s first images in the series.
Rich photographed Daniel on his lakefront property, which was deemed worthless because of the spill.
“I went to his front door and just knocked, because I couldn’t find his number or his email, or anything like that, so I just knocked on his door with a camera in hand,” Rich said. “He told me the entire story of how this thing happened and how the TVA was essentially bullying him to get him to leave, and he started crying.”
Rich said the emotional connection Daniel had was intense, but it was that moment that drew him even deeper into the project.
“Ugly photographs — we’re all numb to those images because we’ve seen them so many times,” Rich said. “If you see a beautiful image of something that you realize is actually a horrible thing, you then start to think more deeply about the image and what’s happening.”
Lipscomb’s John C. Hutcheson Gallery will have Rich’s Watershed Project on display October 2-29.