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Where the Mountain Laurels Bloom 3 Photographs by Pictureman Mullins Text amd Poems by Bob Henry Baber William Richardson Mullins was born April 10, 1886, at George's Fork, Virginia , near Clintwood in Dickenson County. His parents were Abraham and Elizabeth Ann Mullins. Pictureman Mullins, as he came to be known during his career, lived most of his early life in and around Wise and Clintwood, Virginia . During the late teens and early twenties he lived around War, Yeager, and Welch, West Virginia. During the Depression he worked for the Works Progress Administration for 10 cents an hour. On this meager income , supplemented by sporadic photography work and cash crops raised on his thirteen-acre farm, he was able to survive and support his family. During World War II, like many other Appalachians , Pictureman Mullins migrated out of the region to help in the war effort-in his case, in the shipyards at Baltimore, Maryland. When the war ended, Mullins moved to Letcher County, Kentucky, where he spent the rest of his life. He maintained studios in Payne Gap and East Jenkins throughout that period and up until his death in 1969 at the age of 82. He was twice married, first to Virgie Gilliam and later to Elizabeth Johnson. His one surviving son, James Mullins, now resides in Kansas City, Missouri. Pictureman Mullins started taking pictures with a tintype camera when he was fourteen years old. He had no formal training, although he did work with other Ehotographers over the years, most notary Luther Addington, the principal of Wise High School during the nineteen thirties and forties, himself a talented amateur photographer. It's likely that Pictureman was familiar with the trade journals and photography trends of his time. Until the Rural Electrification Association put in electricity in the middle thirties , Mullins developed his photographs in a primitive darkroom that consisted of a window with black drapes over it and a kerosene lamp covered with a red globe. To print a picture, he would place the negative in a hand held printing box, pull back the tape and expose it to just the right amount of natural light. He also had an enlarger he had made himself and fastened to the wall. Apparently this and other "Rube Goldberg' inventions functioned to his satisfaction. Nevertheless, he was, to quote his son, i'in seventh heaven" when electricity arrived and he purchased his first "ilectric enlarger." In the twenties and thirties Pictureman Mullins traveled throughout Wise and Dickenson counties, Virginia, and Letcher and Pike counties in Kentucky. He usually stayed with people he knew, 4 who naturally became the subjects of many of his pictures. This explains in part the feeling of familiarity that so many of his photographs impart. At this time Mullins was too poor to afford a car, so he either walked, rode a bicycle, or hitchhiked. Because he wasn't well off, Pictureman did not have the luxury to take photographs simply for the fun or art of it. Taking good/ pictures was his livelihood, and his pho^ tographs reflected that simple truth. On the other hand Mullins did not let commercial concerns comprise his artistic integrity. Under no circumstances would he retouch a negative. He would tell people, "I will take your picture as you look, not as how you want to look. If you have a mole or wrinkle, that is what you get. If you want it any other way, have an artist paint your picture and leave the mole off." Mullins brought this same stubbornness and mountain pride to his darkroom , where he spent hours working to get the desired effect in a picture. If his efforts fell short, he returned for another session with his subject until he got it right. Pictureman Mullins's photographs are important to Appalachia not only for what they bring to their subject matterattention to detail, highly original and dignified interpretations, experimental reportage, and poetic vision-but also for what they do not bring. In the past many Appalachian photographs suffered from either an overbearing sentimentality and quaintness or from a focus dwelling almost entirely on negative stereotypes. Pictureman Mullins wasn't looking for a "slant" or...

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