Bertien van Manen

This photo is included in Bertien van Manen’s book 'Moonshine’ (2001). Spanning almost three decades, Moonshine is a portrait of the American Appalachian folk, a mythologised region populated by ‘moonshiners’. Bertien Van Manen first visited the region from 1985 up until 2013 to visit mining families with whom she lived, like the Boggs family with their ten red-haired sons and miners Mavis and Junior. The intergenerational images subtly trace the insidious changes undergone in Appalachia – the slow and steady demise of the mining industry, and the migration of inhabitants from ramshackle wooden cabins to the city, or urban trailer parks. Van Manen’s images are defined by a fierce intimacy with her subject, as the viewer teeters on the edge of the frame, perpetually trespassing on private moments.