Lauren Pond An interview with Alexa Dilworth, Publishing and Awards Director Center for Documentary Studies, February 17, 2017 Lauren, where are you from? Tell me a little about you. I’m originally from Southern California. I’m sort of a transplant to the Midwest. I went to college in Illinois, then lived in Washington, D.C., for a few years, and ended up in Ohio for graduate school. How did you get started in photography? I know you went from writing to photography. I went to Northwestern University to study print journalism. While I was there, I wrote for the school newspaper. I ended up spending a lot of time at the photo desk, and I shot photos to accompany my articles. I learned photography by shadowing other photographers, and through trial and error on my own. I really came to appreciate photography as a form of storytelling, in addition to writing. I think part of it also—you wouldn’t necessarily know it now if you met me, but I’m somewhat of an introvert by nature. I’ve always been shy. The camera had this way of pulling me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to go to new places and communities. How did you come to specialize in covering faith and religion? I was raised in a Presbyterian family, but we never really went to church very much. Then, I think when I was in middle school or high school, we just stopped going altogether. I think because I don’t come from a religious background, I have always been curious about what faith means to other people, and why others believe and practice as they do. That makes sense. I have a question or two for you about access, about how you became a part of this family and community, but I’m curious about how you got interested in serpent handling in the first place? In the summer of 2010, I took an anthropology class called Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. One of the articles I read in the course was about serpent handling, which I’d never heard of, and I was shocked to find out that it existed in the United States. That planted the seed in my mind. I wanted to go and study the practice, and learn what it was about.
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I had some time the following winter to travel to West Virginia, to a town called Jolo, which is one of the better-known serpent handling towns in the U.S. The main serpent handling church there is now closed. I didn’t see any serpent handling during the first few trips that I made. I just got to know the town. One day while I was there, I happened to hear about a serpent handling service that was going to be held in a place called Panther Park, near Jolo. That’s where I met Mack Wolford for the first time. You must have found Mack a pretty charismatic person. How did that relationship develop, and how have you come to know his family, whom you continue to photograph and which is a large part of the book? Mack was always open to the media. I think for a lot of pastors, having reporters around is a way to get their message out there. Talking to his family later, I came to understand that he also saw members of the media as people who could be personally affected by his message. He was always open to having people around, because he wanted to keep the faith alive. He was just very open and willing to share his story with whoever was interested and wanted to listen, really. I went to a number of more formal services, and then asked if I could come visit him and his wife, Fran, in the fall. I visited them for a few days. I think Mack appreciated that I was interested in his life outside of church. Most people who have photographed serpent handlers focus only on the worship services and the snakes. We stayed in touch. It was not a deep friendship at first. I was more of an acquaintance. That’s interesting, how the relationship grew. You’ve now become so much a part of things. I know you have Thanksgiving with them. . . . Yes, for four years now. They know that I care a lot about them, and they care a lot about me. The relationships have gradually become deeper and more personal over the years. It comes through in the photographs. Thank you. What, or who, are your influences as a photographer? Stephanie Sinclair’s work is certainly an important influence. When I saw her work about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or FLDS, in Utah, it really struck me as an interesting way to cover religion. The images did not just depict “in the church” practices, but people’s daily lives. I felt like I connected with the people in the photographs. That shaped how I approach my work. Certain religious practices, particular dogmas, can set people apart. When you find shared human moments, barriers start to fall. That’s what I’ve always been interested in: capturing what we have in common.
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How did you hear about the First Book Prize, and why did you submit your work? I was in grad school. I heard about the prize then and applied in 2014, but didn’t get it. Then, in 2016, I saw a post online about the approaching submission deadline. I thought I should give it another try. I had actually just given a presentation about my work on serpent handlers, so the topic was fresh in my mind, and I felt more confident. Why did you see this work as a book? After Mack died, I honestly thought that was the end of my work, especially because I had a falling-out with his family. It was about a year after he died before I saw the Wolfords again. When I went back to visit them, I really just wanted to build a relationship with them. I didn’t start by taking photographs of them, although that eventually happened. The story now is not just about Mack, but my relationship with his family as it evolved—as they forgave me and accepted me back into their community. I gradually realized that my work could be a book—about Mack and serpent handling, yes, but also his family, and about forgiveness and redemption, which are important to them and their faith. What happened, why did you have a falling out with the Wolfords? When Mack was suffering from the snake bite, the Wolfords took him home to recover, and two videographers and I went along. Because it was hot that day and Mack was uncomfortable, his family had taken off some of his clothing. Mack’s family did not want him to be photographed without his shirt on. I eventually took some photographs inside the house because I felt like I needed to document this part of the faith and keep telling the story—and because I felt powerless to do anything else, as Mack did not believe in getting medical treatment for bites. Some of my images showed the pastor’s back. However, at that point, I still believed that Mack would recover, and I thought we could talk about everything then. But he didn’t. As I will explain in the book, after Mack’s unexpected death, I got sucked into a cycle of media pressure, and I wasn’t thinking clearly. Stories were being published by people who hadn’t been there and didn’t really know Mack or what had happened; some of these were inaccurate and insensitive. I felt obligated to explain what I had witnessed, and to help humanize the situation. When editors approached me again, wanting to publish my photographs and offering me the chance to publish a personal essay along with them, I agreed. Not understanding how fundamental modesty is to Signs Following culture, or just how sensitive of an issue this was for Mack’s family, I made the mistake of including two images that showed Mack’s back. Seeing published photos of Mack without his shirt, so soon after his death, was very painful for the Wolfords. It was a bad call on my part, and I deeply regret it.
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What did you think when you heard? When I told you that Peter Barberie had picked you to win? It didn’t feel real at first. This body of work has been particularly painful for me sometimes, and I haven’t really gotten it out there much as a result. When I found out about the award, it was shocking to me, and I felt a little overwhelmed. But now I’m very excited! As I’ve looked at your photographs, I’ve begun to think of Test of Faith as being as much about Mack as his whole family, and also a story of place. Serpent handling, obviously, is something that is unfamiliar to many people. Can you talk more about serpent handing and the serpent-handlers? What is the story? I’ve read numerous books about serpent handling over the years. Some people say it’s about one thing; other people say it’s about another. Like most religious practices, it holds different meanings to each person, so there is not a singular story. Based on my personal experience, though, I think it’s about forgiveness, redemption, and closeness to God. When they’re handling serpents, everything else goes away. They’re just connected to God in that moment. Being forgiven for your past shortcomings and sins, and being able to make this intimate connection—that’s a big part of it. One of the aspects that most fascinates me, looking at the pictures, is Mack’s mother. She lost her husband to a snake bite, and then she lost her son and has another son who is handling serpents. And there are the younger generation coming up; there are pictures of them holding snakes. They’ve seen what happens, and yet it’s still such a powerful, compelling thing to do. It does seem, on the surface, counterintuitive to continue handling serpents after seeing someone die from a snake bite. Especially for Mack’s mother, Snook. But it’s not really about the snake bite; it’s about obedience to the Bible and relying on God. If someone is bitten, they believe that it’s up to God to decide whether that person lives or dies. Whatever happens is God’s will. Being able to accept that demonstrates the strength of their faith and beliefs. I was wondering if Mack had a job other than preaching. He did. He worked at a coalmine for a while, and also in different types of construction. He and Fran traveled a lot for his jobs, and I believe they lived in Maryland for a while. She told me they’d have services in the hotel room they were staying in at the time. When he didn’t have a church, he took the church with him. He later injured himself at work—really hurt his back—and ended up going on disability. Mack had been in and out of church numerous times over the course of his life, but he started getting much more committed to his faith in the late 1990s, and opened his own church in 2010. He was an ordained minister.
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How do the Wolfords respond to you making photos? Has your approach changed over time? Mack was used to having people photograph him. Initially, I wasn’t focusing on the rest of his family, though they were there in some of my images. I no longer think of this project as being a photojournalistic one, or of my images as documents. I make some portraits. I do still lifes. I learn about the things that are significant to the family and photograph them. And they sometimes give me direction on what to photograph. Could you give me an example? Fran, for instance, often prefers not to be in pictures. When I first met Mack, she didn’t want to be in any of my images. When I took a portrait of her recently, she only wanted a little bit of her face in it. The photo of her on the couch with the drawing of Mack only shows part of her face. Before, I might have taken a picture that I thought looked good, but now I try to incorporate her perspective, too. Are you going to keep photographing the family? I take my camera every time I visit, but honestly, when I go now, I go as a friend. If they ask me to photograph something, I do, and if something interesting happens, I’ll photograph, but it’s not my main purpose in being there. Are you working on anything else right now—photo projects? Your day jobs are pretty interesting too. Photographically, I’ve been working on a project about evangelical Christian truck drivers and truck chapels. There’s a truck chapel in Lodi, Ohio, that I photographed in grad school. I went back there on an assignment for the AARP. I shadowed a driver as he hauled some steel up to New York and back. I wanted to learn about how the chapel figured into his routine and his life. I also work for an art gallery that shows the work of artists who have been affected by mental illness, and I work at The Ohio State University, where I produce multimedia essays for the American Religious Sounds Project, which is about studying religious pluralism through sound. It’s a novel approach. Religion is often photographed or written about, but it’s not often that we listen to it. That’s an underlying question we’ve been exploring: What can we learn about religion if we start by listening to it? I’ve been working with a team of researchers to capture recordings, and then I edit these into audio collages and essays. I’m working now on a piece about Islamophobia and anti-Islamic rhetoric, and how the Muslim community has responded. Many Muslims feel their voices have been silenced or coopted, and they are trying to take their voices back.
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