ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Willa Johnson, Director of Appalachian Media Institute
Willa Johnson joined Appalshop in 2017 as the Lead Educator of Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute, which she now directs. Willa first began her journey with AMI in 2007 as a youth media intern, and has served as an Appalachian Transition Fellow with the Highlander Education and Research Center. She is a co-founder of the Stay Together Appalachian Youth Project (STAY) and worked for the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative (KVEC) Community Engagement team, where she created FIREshare, a program designed in collaboration with The Holler (a regionally create online learning platform) to train teachers and students to use multimedia tools to tell their own stories about their schools and communities. A daughter of a retired middle school teacher and coal truck driver, Willa Johnson was raised in Letcher County and is a foster care advocate and adoptive parent to a curious and kind toddler.

Wendy Ewald
Wendy Ewald has collaborated in art projects with children, families, women, and teachers for over fifty years. Starting as documentary investigations of places and communities, Ewald’s projects probe questions of identity and cultural differences. In her work with children she encourages them to use cameras to record themselves, their families, and their communities, and to articulate their fantasies and dreams. Ewald herself often makes photographs within the communities she works with and has the children mark or write on her negatives, thereby challenging the concept of who actually makes an image, who is the photographer, who the subject, who is the observer and who the observed. In blurring the distinction of individual authorship and throwing into doubt the artist’s intentions, power, and identity, Ewald creates opportunities to look at the meaning and use of photographic images in our lives with fresh perceptions.

Historical Reviewer

Caroline Rubens
Archivist at Appalshop

Discussion Guide Producers, POV

Courtney B. Cook
Education Manager

The creation of this POV Engage educational resource is made possible by the generous support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.