An Explanation of Sympathetic Magic

by Greg Banks

God, witches, devils, mythical creatures, speaking in tongues, snake, and fire handling, and raising the dead all exist in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky. For this body of work, I am appropriating family photographs, as well as vernacular images, to tell supernatural stories about my family history and the region that I come from. My work weaves together a personal narrative with the folkloric history of that area. Photoshop and the unpredictability of smartphone applications are used in a similar way to how a folktale unfolds. Each app is manipulating the story as a person might exaggerate a tale when they pass it along. By assembling family photographs and appropriating historical images, I am constructing stories with contemporary tools for manipulation and passing them along as visual folklore.

After asking the mother of Norma Blanton if he could pray for her, Sherman Lawson brought the young girl, who had been deceased for twenty-four hours, back from the dead.

Devil John Wright, worked with land speculator John C.C. Mayo and was brutal to farmers as they acquired the farmer's land and mineral rights for mining in Eastern KY.

My grandmother Eleanor’s life changed dramatically after my grandfather HK passed away in 1977. She tore down the barn and stopped farming. My mother has said her life was better after my grandfather died, which I always found curious. But she was no longer up at 6 a.m. milking cows while he was in the coal-mines.

Snake handling began with George Went Hensley in Appalachia in about 1910. He was bitten over 400 times before he took his final bite on July 25, 1955.

Greg Banks is a nationally shown photo-based artist and instructor, currently teaching at Appalachian State University. He received his MFA in photography at East Carolina in May 2017.  He received a B.A. in photography and a B.A. in fine art from Virginia Intermont College in 1998. In 2017, he was one of only seven artists chosen for the Light Factory’s Annuale 9. Greg’s work was among the top 5 most popular, on the online magazine “Don’t Take Pictures” in 2017.  Greg combines everything from iPhone images to historic 19th-century processes, gelatin silver printing, painting and digital printing. His current creative practice investigates family, folklore, memories, Appalachia, as well as history and religion.