Shelby Lee Adams – Hort Collins, Photographs and Mountain Music

Shelby Lee Adams is known for his photographic work made in his native land of Eastern Kentucky. Some of his relationships with his subjects now span decades. In 1993 Shelby had made an hour Super-VHS video with his friend Hort Collins. Newly discovered in the fall of 2015, he now has made this tape into a digital video program. The program, consist of Hort playing the mandolin as background music and he sings a country hymn, featured with Shelby’s Polaroids that demonstrate his working mythology and support from the Polaroid Corporation, with other photographs made in the Hooterville community, where Hort resided. “The Brothers Praying,” 1993, is featured. Hort with his brother Henry are the subject’s. Their mother Mimi is in the background. This photograph is one of Shelby’s iconic images, with many additional photographs of other regional musicians included.