I left Kentucky in 1982 after teaching photography to middle school students for five years at the Campbells Branch School in Kentucky. When my star pupils, Denise Dixon and Russell Akemon, approached puberty, they stopped taking pictures. I told myself they’d probably grow up to be men and women of the mountains, with the security and limitations of their culture. But in 2008, I received an email that nearly stopped my heart.

Dear Wendy,

I have thought about you often throughout the years. I am now Denise Benge. You would remember me as Denise Dixon from Whitesburg, Ky. I recently came across your name on the Internet, and thought I would send you an email. I am 40 years old. I am married with two boys.

I still have a passion and a love for photography. People often ask me to do pictures for weddings and other special occasions…so I have recently become active again in photography. I realized that it will always be a part of who I am.

For almost forty years I lived with the photographs my students made in the 70s without knowing what had become of my students. My friend Elizabeth Barret, a filmmaker from Hazard, Kentucky suggested we look for the students and make a film. We made arrangements for a reunion that was held at the County Extension Building overlooking Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Most of the students hadn’t seen each other since the 70s. Many of them brought photographs they’d made when they were in my class. Denise Dixon Benge brought a picture she’d made thirty years earlier of herself as “the girl with the snake around her neck” wearing a wig and a gauzy nightgown. She also brought a contemporary remake of the same picture.

Gary Crase brought a photograph of himself raising a pickaxe over the head of a cat that his father was holding. Gary described it, shockingly but accurately, as the classic image of an abused child trying to appease his abuser.

Our conversations at the reunion turned out to be the beginning of a nine-year project to make Portraits and Dreams, a documentary about being young and freely imaginative back then, about memories of pain and joy, and about the discovery of love that spanned the years.

The connections between all of us, we discovered, were still there, but the stories of the students’ lives were more complicated than any of us had imagined. For one thing, my Kentucky students stayed home, or so I thought – while I left Kentucky and went on to collaborate with children and women on photography projects all over the world.

But my Kentucky students didn’t stay home. They charted extraordinary new paths for themselves in and out of Appalachia: Sue Dixon Brashear was a teacher and school principal, Johnny Wilder was a machine operator, Gary Crase was a lab technician and teacher, Denise Dixon Benge was a photographer and videographer, and Delbert Shepherd was a contractor and a musician. The lessons they’d learned as image makers, storytellers and masters of their own creativity had guided them. And they’d taught us a lesson I’ll always remember: that it was often more interesting to frame the world according to others’ visions as well as my own.

Wendy Ewald, Director/Producer

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