Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

If one adheres to the old saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then those of local photographer Traci Arney speak volumes, not only in the amount of pictures she has taken, but in the stories that they share.

Her work truly does tell stories and she has one such series on exhibit at A Photographers Place in Raleigh, which documents a Gold Hill farm family’s heritage and a tradition that is disappearing.

An opening reception for Arney’s solo exhibition, titled “Blood and Soil: Life and Legacy on a Family Farm,” was held June 13 and will remain on display for the public to see through July 26 at the Raleigh gallery, which she said specializes in photography.

“The work centers on the Trexler family of Rowan County and the seasonal hog killings they host to feed their extended community,” said Arney. “It’s a project I’ve worked on over many years, and one that explores the intersection of tradition, labor and familial legacy.”

A Salisbury-based fine art photographer, Arney credits her love of photography as far back as her middle school years at Erwin Middle School in Andy Cotton’s seventh grade science class.

“Anything he could connect to photography in that class, he did,” Arney said. “So it was light, optics, chemistry. If he could get us into a dark room or put a camera in our hands to learn about science, that’s what he did, and I got hooked.”

She continued on her path of photography throughout high school and was accepted into a program at Oxford University in England, where she studied abroad under photographer Julia Perry, who encouraged her to continue her photography. During her time in England and with the photos she took while there, Arney had a solo exhibition.

Afterwards, she returned to the United States and was admitted into the photo studies department at Arizona State where she earned a bachelor of fine arts degree.

“I’ve never done anything else. It’s always been photography,” said Arney. “I have worked in fine art dark rooms printing for museums and galleries. I have taught at the college level. I have shot weddings and portraits for 20 years. And I’ve always done fine art in the background.”

Now it’s almost predominately fine art, which she defined as being “a practice of using photography as a visual storytelling method and it is a way of communicating through photographs visually.”

That definition is shown in the latest exhibit, which tells the story of the Trexler family’s hog killing through her 23 black and white photos.

Arney shared in her artist statement that when she first began taking the photos in 2000, she was “a vegetarian — curious, cautious and expecting to witness something harsh or unsettling. But what I found was something else entirely. Their annual gathering was not about violence, but reverence. It was methodical, precise and filled with intention. I’ve returned over the years because I realized this wasn’t just a story about food. It was a story about care, tradition and the quiet bonds that hold a family together.”

Arney was introduced to the Trexlers by her father, who grew up on a small family farm as well, and while she herself had not witnessed a hog killing while young, she did know about the rhythms of a working farm and producing one’s own food, she said.

She noted that what initially started as “observation became relationship, and over time, the Trexlers allowed me in, not just with my camera, but as someone they trusted to witness them fully.”

Arney’s photographs in this series show, in documentary fashion, a family and community, doing the hard work together, and as she said, it is done with a “deep awareness of what it means to take a life, and why. The fires never stop burning — tended day and night, casting their glow over the constant motion of hands and hearts. The work is grueling — physical, unrelenting — but when shared the way the Trexlers do it, it becomes something more. Not a burden, but a passion. A way of expressing love for family, reverence for life and a pride that runs generations deep.”

Arney said that her visits to the farm during the hog killings resulted in a documentary study of the family and how they create their own food products, but said these events are “simply a backdrop of a story about family and community and the connection that people have when creating their own food sources.”

Arney noted the events are quite beautiful, as the community comes together to do this practice which is “basically dying out and one of the really impressive things to me, is their understanding of where their food comes from. I think that that’s kind of lost in today’s society” as people visit a grocery store and don’t consider where the food comes from or the work it takes to be able to get it.

She stressed that the Trexlers are kind to their animals and both respectful and thankful to them for their sacrifice, which feeds family and community, which is the story told in the photographs.

“Traci’s work captures a world that exists outside of time — one shaped by the hands of those who live on the land and understand what it takes to feed a community,” said Ray Pfeiffer, gallery director at A Photographers Place. “This show is as much about preservation as it is about tradition.”

Another show for this exhibit is scheduled to be held at The Light Factory in Charlotte, and Arney noted that she is in talks with someone in Salisbury to possibly have a show here as well.

“I feel like it’s super important to have it be a local show because there are so many local people in the community who still practice hog killings and I want to show it,” she said. “People are so afraid of it, but they shouldn’t be because it’s just a reality of life. If we’re going to eat meat, we need to know where our food comes from. And a lot of farming families still do this process, so I think it’s important to have it locally so that our community can see the respect that this family has for what they do.”

In addition to the “Blood and Soil” solo exhibition, Arney has another solo event coming up in Faith. Dates and details are tentative, she noted, but will be shared as they become available.

When it comes to her work, she said that she didn’t care if people loved it or hated it, because in these feelings, “they’re having an emotional response from it and to it,” she said.

But what she doesn’t like is when people just “bypass it and don’t really pay attention to it because then, that conversation is not happening.”

Therefore, Arney said, when people look at her work, what she wants them to take away from it is, “there is immense beauty in this world, and even in the hard things, there is beauty, and photography has the unique capability because of its realism making us stop and really think about what we’re looking at.”

Speaking specifically about the Blood and Soil images, she said that she hopes people see that this exhibit is “about dignity and community and the reliance of people on one another. I think a lot of times we are losing community. We stay so isolated in our homes and we don’t have as close bonds with our neighbors as we used to and that’s one of the things that I see in the Trexler story.”

Recording these stories in her photographs is important to Arney because she said she is very interested in the areas of our culture that are disappearing.

“We have become so sanitized and automated and industrialized that we are stepping away from age-old practices, and that’s one of the things that the Trexlers and this practice of hog killing are maintaining in their lives and in their community. It’s one of the things that attracted me to the series when I first started,” said Arney.

Wanting to preserve traditions that are dying out through her photography, she encourages anyone that has any such customs that they would like documented to contact her by calling Traci Arney Photography at 336-404-6949 or email her at traciarneyphoto@gmail.com. For additional information or to see her work, check out her website at traciarneyphotoart.com or on her Facebook page.