Sister Lucy Bonifas, 78, prepares a bouquet of flowers grown in her backyard before delivering them to the chapel of Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, where she worked from 1969 until April 2016. Though she recently retired, Sister Lucy, a member of Sisters of Saint Francis, still visits the hospital every week to deliver fresh flowers and talk to patients. “God speaks to me through flowers,” says Sister Lucy. “He suprises me with his gifts, with the beauty and love he brings.” |Skyler Ballard
Hobo, a shetland sheepdog up for adoption at the McCracken County Humane Society, introduces himself to Coy Stalions. |Skyler Ballard
Jamey Ward, 45, in his trailer in Paducah, Ky. on Oct. 22, 2016. A retiree of the river barges, Ward is now an alcoholic who spends most time at home surrounded by beer cans. Fights often break out between himself and his friends as they search for money to buy beers.| Gabriel Scarlett
Justin Griffith, 27, kisses his youngest son, Lucas, in his front yard in Farley, an area of Paducah, Ky. nicknamed “Farlem” for its low income demographic. Justin is a young father taking bible classes through the mail to become a pastor. Two of his boys are his fiance’s sons. “It’s one of the great feelings in this world when they started calling me dad,” he explains. “Not something I made them do so when they first called me that, my heart just melted.”| Gabriel Scarlett
A man cries on the altar of St. Joseph’s Church as Spanish-speaking members of the congregation lay hands on and pray for him during the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2016. | Photo by Gabriel Scarlett
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church is reflected on the hood of a black Cadillac on Oct. 10, 2016. | Photo by Gabriel Scarlett
“I got all kinds, and all colors. I got charcoal, green, rust, I got colors I can’t even name. Anytime I put on a suit the shoes match.” Thomas Brown, 62, of Vinegrove, said outside State Street Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Ky. Brown regularly drives over an hour from Vinegrove to worship at State Street Baptist Church. | Photo by Michael Noble Jr.
When President Donald J. Trump announced an executive order, banning legal visitors from 7 Muslim majority countries, Elnaz Jalali was faced with the decision to sacrifice her dream or to be separated from her family living in Iran. “After 5 years staying in the U.S., investing my money, my time, my energy and my knowledge over here, if I wake up one day and someone says: ‘what you did over here is done and you should go back home.’” Jalali said. Jalali is in her final semester studying for a masters in chemistry but hoped to pursue a doctorate post graduation. “I’m terrified it doesn’t end here. Imagine for five years I won’t be able to go back home to visit my parents and my parents won’t be able to come here. I can’t live without my parents,” Jalali said. |Alyse Young
Brandon Scurlock opens the piercing pliers for Gary Fralick during a bighorn sheep wrangle near Big Piney Jan. 25, 2017. Wyoming Game & Fish Department are putting radio collars on bighorn sheep to track where they stay for the winter. |Ashley Cooper
On his senior night in high school Pancake Thomas jumped up and cut open his arm on the backboard. Since then Thomas went on to play two seasons at the University of New Mexico then transferring to the University of Hartford and playing one season there. Thomas has averaged 13.5 points a game since joining the Hilltoppers earlier this year. |Shaban Athuman
From left to right, Hayley Hoback, Izzy Rager, Morgan Goetz and Rachel Shipp lean on one another at a vigil to memorialize their Alpha Gamma Delta sister, Stephanie Campbell, on Wednesday, Sept. 28 at the AGD sorority house. Campbell passed away Sunday, Sept. 25 as a result of a single-car accident on the Western Kentucky Parkway. “She has tattooed on her foot ‘You can breathe,'” remembered Hayley Hoback at the vigil. “And that’s what I can say to her. ‘You can breathe now.’ She’s in a better place now.” | Gabriel Scarlett
Members of the Western Kentucky Big Red Marching Band practice before an NCAA college football game with Western Kentucky University taking on Houston Baptist University, Saturday, Oct. 1, 2016, in Bowling Green, Ky. | Michael Noble Jr.
Lydia Billion, a WKU alumnus, quietly kneels during the “National Anthem” as a form of peaceful protests of the current treatment of African-Americans in the United States. Last weekend when students and members of the Major Redz knelt during the song, fellow fans attempted to shout them down. The protests were also spurred on by two recent incidents of racism on Western Kentucky University’s campus. | Gabriel Scarlett
After spotting the new moon members of Bethel Fellowship Ministries blow shofars in celebration of the Feast of Trumpets. It is a biblically commanded celebration and is observed after sighting the new moon which starts the first day of the seventh biblical lunar month. | Ashley Cooper
Members of the Major Redz file out of the DSU before Western Kentucky University took on rivals Vanderbilt on Saturday, September 24, 2016. |Gabriel Scarlett
Vanderbilt outside linebacker Caleb Peart, 9, celebrates after a win over rivals Western Kentucky University on Saturday, September 24, 2016. |Gabriel Scarelett
Arthur Woodsen, 74, becomes aggravated on the topic of civil rights in the living room of his home in Bardstown, KY. Woodsen grew up in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. “My race of people were looked at as not even being human,” said Woodsen. “And that same segregation is still around today. God’s blessed me to live seventy four years, and I’ve seen this country get worse instead of better.” |Skylar Ballard
Western Kentucky University wide receiver Nacarius Fant (1) makes a 61 yard catches for a touchdown during the second quarter of the Western Kentucky University-Vanderbilt University game on Saturday Sept. 24, 2016 at L.T. Smith Stadium in Bowling Green. |Shaban Athuman
|Video by Michaela Miller and Katie Roberts |Edited by Alyse Young
Each October, a group of visual journalists set up shop in a different community in Kentucky to document life and culture in a way that is rarely attempted. Raw and live, it’s all about the people and their stories, not the institutions. It’s called the Mountain Workshops, and dozens of students and professionals from around the country swoop in for a week every year to garner new skills and fresh inspiration.
It’s a crash course in visual journalism, and the participants’ best work is published on this website. Selected photographs are also printed for a museum-quality exhibit, and many of the photos and stories are published in a book that documents the town and its surrounding rural area.
Participants can choose from one of six options for the week. Photojournalism, the original workshop at Mountain, has always been a big hit, but Video Storytelling is increasingly in demand. If you wish to increase your knowledge in other visual skills, the Mountain Workshops can deliver. Picture Editing pushes a traditional skill set of image selection and book design into the digital age, while Time-Lapse takes us into a fascinating world of compressed time through motion. The Data Visualization workshop probes the masses of abstract charts and numbers to create stories that affect real people.
A special workshop for K-12 educators is hosted by Dataseam, a Louisville-based nonprofit that provides resources for Kentucky educators. The Dataseam Teacher Track workshop is designed to help high school teachers looking to develop their students’ communication skills to tell their own stories.
Six workshops held in one location, in one week, with a constant flow of new ideas and one-on-one guidance by the top professionals in their fields, all add up to an intense five days of high-octane education in visual communication and storytelling.
Be sure to watch the video at the top of this page which was shot in Frankfort, Ky where the workshops were hosted last year.
Derek Harris, the bass player for The Misty Mountain String Band, fixes his tie backstage before the start of the first Live Lost River Music Session at the Capitol Arts Center on Thursday, September 15th, 2016. This Lost River Music Session hosted a variety of folk-genres for a packed crowd, such as Bluegrass and Americana. |Weston Kenney
Skeeter Depp carries his new son, Treyson Depp, out of the c-section surgery room. Tryson is a “rainbow baby,” a healthy child born after a series of miscarriages. |Abigail Potter
William Kirby, 71, recalls difficult memories from the tumultuous 1960s in America. As a teenager in Alabama, he remembers the rape of an African-American girl by a group of white boys. After weeks of recovery, the girl and her friends went out to a movie that he was at with his friends. “They snatch this particular girl from the crowd and they hung her right out in the courthouse yard,” Kirby explains, his voice breaking with emotion. “There wasn’t about five of us, and all these white people around, we wasn’t going to try to save her. We runned for our lives too.” Three years later, he volunteered for the U.S. Army to fight for a country that did not yet guarantee him his human rights. During the recruiting process, he witnessed the riots in Montgomery from the third floor of a hotel but was ordered by his commanding officers to not take part, talk about it, or to take sides. “I watched them spray them with a hose, letting them dogs loose on people…It’s in the history books, but what I saw made those history books real.” | Gabriel Scarlett
Coney island clowns dance atop of a mobile boombox during the second day of the Electric Daisy Carnival at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. More than 400,000 festival goers migrated to Las Vegas to celebrate the 20th anniversary of EDC. The sold-out festival featured eight stages, multiple art installations, theatrical performers, and much more.|Harrison Hill
As dusk approaches, Desaire Gaddy explores the dry scrubland that surrounds her rural home outside of Thoreau. Gaddy was moved back onto the Navajo Nation Reservation from her life in Florida to stay with relatives who live without running water due to the ongoing water crisis. “Do you want me to show you where I dreamt of the water running?” she muses. “All through here, just blue water and dolphins.” Most children grow up on the reservation not knowing of another life, but not she.|Gabriel Scarlett
Board of Supervisors Malia Cohen and Ahmed Abozayd vice president of Local 87 speak before a march in support of janitors with SEIU Local 87 on Thursday, July 28, 2016 in downtown San Francisco. The janitors are in a contract fight with employers.|Michael Noble Jr.
Camp 8 brush fire squad members take a break as a valley catches fire in Duarte, California on June 20, 2016. As temperatures reached triple digits, more than 1,000 firefighters deployed to fight two fires that raged just miles apart from each other in Duarte and Azusa, California. Together, the fires burned around 5,000 acres and forced the evacuation of at least 770 homes according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.|Harrison Hill
Robert Mims of Bryan, TX competes in the bull riding portion of the National Senior Pro Rodeo on Tuesday July 5, 2016 at O.L McMains JR. Arena in Grants, Nm. Mims finished second.|Shaban Athuman
“Coach Lederhouse always tells us ‘we are free to swim’. God has made us free and already redeemed us. We don’t have to earn anything, and we can have peace that He is in control,” Wheaton swimmer alumni ’16 Kirsten Nitz said. “Do your best, and leave the rest up to God.” Through practicing and competing with broken ribs and illnesses like the flu, Nitz never stops. Her dedication and strive to do her best over the years has led her to earning five individual national NCAA titles – a first for any Wheaton athlete in any sport. She is also the first Wheaton swimmer to go undefeated in all of her 12 CCIW individual events and earned the title of a CoSIDA All-American athlete three-times.|Erica Lafser
“Any time I think about it, I speak about it, I get angry”. A retired uranium worker of over two decades reacts in frustration and anger as he explains the harmful practices he took part in during his years as an employee of the United Nuclear Corporation at their Church Rock Mill. His name is withheld for the safety of himself and his family. In the past when he has spoken out, his family was threatened and once a coworker came to his house and threw a brick through a window, nearly hitting his infant grandson. While working at the Church Rock Mill, he remembers taking part in chemical dumping, burning of official medical documents, and he vividly remembers the faulty practices that led up to the Church Rock Spill, the largest spilling of radioactive material in North American history. “Love got stories about what we did, about what was done by the companies, about how they don’t care about the people… A lot of times I shed a tear. I think about the elderly, I think about the kids.”|Gabriel Scarlett
James Copas, 52 (left) and Harold Copas, 62 (right) sit on the front porch with their mother Mildred Walker, 89 as they enjoy the summer breeze and making their mother laugh. 23rd June 2016. Tompkinsville, Ky.|Srijita Chattopadhyay
A group of protesters gather to demand D.A Gascòn to bring charges to the police officers that shot and killed unarmed Amilcar Perez-Lopez on June 22, 2016 in San Francisco, California.|Michael Noble Jr.
The Suffer’s singer Kam Franklin performs at BottleRock 2016 in Napa, Calif. on Sunday, May 29, 2016.|Michael Noble Jr.
Inez Grace is held by her brother Leo Gomez as they watch their homes burn on Saturday June 26, 2016 in the Gamerco neighborhood on in Gallup, Nm.|Shaban Athuman
Russell Gardner, 5, holds plungers he used as paintbrushes during the Big Art Everywhere activities Wednesday, July 6, 2016, at the Children’s School.|Michael Clark
Annie Herring, 16 of Graford, Tx, will competes in Pole bending and Barrel racing in the Best of the Best timed events rodeo in Churchrock, NM. “I came for the experience, I wanted to a new rodeo” Herring said.|Shaban Athuman
LOUISVILLE, KY – JUNE 08: Roddrick Woods, 5, visited the Muhammad Ali Center and I Am Ali festival on June 8, 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky. Woods did a Kindergarten project on Ali. “He was a boxer from Louisville. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!” Woods said.|Justin Gilliland
|Video by: Alyse Young
|Video by Michaela Miller, Ashley Cooper, Madihah Abri and Alyse Young |Edited by Katie Roberts and Alyse Young
Come visit the Gallery in Mass Media and Technology Hall to witness more than 60 photographs taken by National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. The images are part of the Photo Ark project currently being conducted by Sartore and National Geographic where the magazine is committed to documenting every species of animal in captivity today. The gallery is open:
Sunday 3:00 – 9:00 pm
Monday – Wednesday 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
Thursday – Friday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Parking is free after 4:30 in the Chestnut Street lot or free all day in any lot on Sunday.
Come visit the Gallery in Mass Media and Technology Hall to witness more than 60 photographs taken by National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. The images are part of the Photo Ark project currently being conducted by Sartore and National Geographic where the magazine is committed to documenting every species of animal in captivity today. The gallery is open: