Lisa Elmaleh

Photographer
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American Folk
Location: Paw Paw, WV
Nationality: American, Moroccan
Biography: Lisa Elmaleh is an American visual artist, educator, and documentarian based in Hampshire County, West Virginia. She specializes in large-format work in tintype, glass negative, and celluloid film. Since 2007, she has been traveling across the US... MORE
Public Story
American Folk
Copyright Lisa Elmaleh 2024
Updated Jan 2017
Location Appalachia
Topics Landscape, Portraiture
Since 2010, I have been creating tintypes of musicians who play traditional American folk music in and around the Appalachian Mountains - West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. I travel out to the homestead of each musician, and spend a full day or more with each musician, documenting their likeness, their instruments, and the landscape that they reside in. Each 8x10 tintype plate is hand coated, exposed in a large format camera, and developed on-site in a small darkroom in the back of my pickup truck.

This music guides me visually "“ the portraits are traditional, with historical references, as the music is traditional. I am largely influenced by those who came before me - the Appalachian portraits of Doris Ullman, or the agricultural portraits and landscapes of Dorothea Lange. The tradition of American folk music echoes in the historic nature of the process I am using.
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