The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia -- Film Description:
"For over 30 years, the controversial Shelby Lee Adams has been photographing the mountain people living in a rural region of eastern Kentucky where he grew up. Many question his work and methods, and his grim narratives have been denounced as a meeting of Diane Arbus's lust for the macabre and Walker Evans's hard-times realism. Critics declare that Adams's black-and-white images exploit and betray the culture he claims to know and love so well by portraying Appalachia as one big horror show. [...] Through interviews, photos and Adams's archival videos, we see how he orchestrates the theatrical quality of his images; we realize that his attraction to what he calls environmental portraits comes from his identification with the suffering and pain of the human condition. His intent is not to idealize or romanticize the people he photographs—in his view, they accept themselves for who they are."
-- Stacey Donen

Source:
Toronto International Film Festival [Programme]. Toronto: Toronto International Film Festival, 2002. (p. 179)