ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612020085
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-20 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
IT'S AN AGE-OLD YEARNING, the desire to go West. Perhaps no one who has savored the American landscape as much as Jack Jeffers could avoid feeling that tug.
Soon he'll join the pioneers who answered the call for adventure and renewal by heading toward the sunset. After photographing the Virginia mountains for 25 years, Jeffers is leaving his home state and moving to Wyoming for a new vista.
He left the New River Valley and his job as Radford University's official photographer about six years ago. Now he's sold his home place in Farmville, packed up his belongings and equipment, and headed out to pass the winter along the Georgia seacoast.
When spring comes and the snow melts, Jeffers will migrate to his new station, a plot of land below Wyoming's Wind River Mountains and a house he hopes will be finished by autumn.
"We're going to stay as long as we like it," Jeffers says, speaking for his wife, also.
Curiosity served Jeffers well throughout his many trips through the back country coves and hidden hollows of Virginia's mountains. Those journeys yielded thousands of pictures, two books and a wide personal catalog of memories.
But change is an Appalachian constant. Most followers of traditional mountain life, characterized by flinty isolation and self-reliance, have gone. Jeffers met a few survivors of that breed and made pictures of the weather-beaten homesteads others left behind.
Now, like the "lost generation" of mountaineers, he says, "I've worked Appalachia to death." It's time to join the quiet exodus.
In a region that needs love, appreciation and devotion, 1996 has been another year of loss for Appalachia. First, Earl Palmer, the Christiansburg resident who roved with his camera and captured mountain life during the 1950s, died in March. Now Jeffers is leaving, too.
Fortunately for those of us who remain, photography's particular gift is the medium's ability to preserve moments forever. So the rare and beautiful sights Palmer and Jeffers witnessed during their travels and the unique people they met along the way have been given a bit of immortality, courtesy of these artists.
Jeffers' photography has been a valentine to a region that changed his life and defined his art.
In the late 1960s, Jeffers began to explore the Blue Ridge Mountains that loomed above Waynesboro, where he worked in advertising. Hiking through the woods one day, he found an abandoned cabin.
"It was like a documentary on the spot. The people had left. Inside the cabin were old stoves, a lantern, a Bible on the table, wood in the corner, an old worn organ and numerous odds and ends from days gone by," he says.
"That led me to other mountain hollows. It almost became an obsession."
Jeffers negotiated the high, lonesome country with an affable manner, a long stride and 40 pounds of photographic equipment in his backpack. He learned that sometimes a beautiful photograph required only being there to see an early morning mist rise or a quiet February snowfall. Other shots proved more time-consuming.
That was the case with Cyrus, a Nelson County resident with a face creased like a dried-up creek bed. Many hours and a number of visits were devoted to the fraction of a second it took Jeffers to snap Cyrus' picture. But that's how long it took to gain the mountain man's confidence and tell his story with a single photograph.
Every minute was worth the effort. The mountains and the secrets they confessed gave Jeffers the gumption to walk his own road, quit his day job and make a living as a professional photographer.
"It took a big gamble. I really wanted to do something I enjoyed. My goal was to live and function in the world as an artist," he says.
As a necessary concession to feed himself, Jeffers kept "day jobs" throughout. He did commercial photography work and came to Radford University during the 1980s as the university's official cameraman.
Still, Jeffers never lost sight of his artist's vision - even if others failed to get the picture.
He speaks with an edge to his voice about a local art show in Waynesboro that rejected his early work because in those days photography wasn't regarded as true art.
"That made me mad," he says.
Eventually he got his photos in exhibits and soon earned the vindication of seeing his work named as best in show. Convincing the wider art community that photography was as valid as any other medium proved to be more difficult.
Jeffers says he "crashed headlong into the strong prejudice against photography," and vowed to crack the barrier - which he has accomplished, after years of exhibiting, earning national honors and publishing his two books, "Windows to the Blue Ridge" and "Appalachian Byways." He has opened the door for other photographers and also gained a following among people who appreciate both his catalog and his company.
"I think of myself as an artist first, photographer second. I've often told people that art comes from people, not from tools," he says.
Jeffers made what's likely to be his last New River Valley visit in quite a while several weeks ago to exhibit his photographs at the Brush Mountain Crafts Fair on the Virginia Tech campus. Since then, he's been diligently boxing up his belongings in Farmville and preparing to sell his house.
Among his distributions have been 150 prints to the Virginia Historical Society, which plans a spring 1998 exhibit of his Appalachian photographs.
He'd hitchhiked out west as a young man and more recently rediscovered the landscape's majesty and vast scope during a summer 1995 visit. "Shoot fire, I'd move out here in an instant," he recalls thinking to himself.
When his wife casually mentioned the same notion, Jeffers' whimsy turned into the impulsive act of purchasing high desert land near Lander, Wyo. Here Jeffers, who is in his 60s, plans to build a new life, one focused on the horizon.
Taller mountains pose bigger challenges, he figures.
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (All photos by Jack Jeffers.) 1. Cover: An awe-inspiringby CNBview of the Appalachian Mountains. 2. Above: Firing #5, Cass, W.Va.
1977. 3. Right: Tumbling Creek Falls, Washington County, Va. 1993.
4. Above: Cyrus, Mountain Man, along the Blue Ridge, 1973. 4. Right:
The Crest of the Blue Ridge, Reeds Gap, 1977. 6. Jack Jeffers in his
element in the 1980s. 7. Highland Cabin, NW Virginia Highlands,
1974.