From the Kentucky Folk Art Center:

Hallelujah Anyway: A Portrait of Kentucky, Photographs by Michael Morris. Opening reception will be held on August 1st 5-7 pm & will run through December 1st, 2025 at the Kentucky Folk Art Center. Stop by and meet the artist & enjoy some refreshments.

Since late 2011, Michael Morris, a Louisville-based photographer, has been documenting Kentucky with an old Hasselblad medium format camera and black & white film. In the tradition of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and other FSA photographers of the great depression, he has traveled about the state, logging over 250,000 miles since the start of the project, documenting the people, places and things that make up the Commonwealth. He points his camera at anything that piques his interest, most of which are scenes that won’t be around much longer.

Nostalgia, considered a four-letter word in today’s art circles, is a driving force in his work as a southern artist. The impetus to record the world that is vanishing is what drives the work today and has been since 2011.

To get to this exhibit in Morehead, take I-64, to exit 137. Turn south on to HWY 32. Follow the brown KFAC signs to the HWY 60 bypass. 

This sounds interesting, but, as an editor, I can’t let that last paragraph go without a critique. “Nostalgia” is not a four-letter word. That’s not clever. Just makes the writer look dumb. The closest I could get to making this work is saying: The “past,” a scorned four-letter word in today’s art circles …”