In January 1975, Ted Wathen walked into the offices of the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. with a typed-up proposal to photograph life in all 120 Kentucky counties.

Ahead of the nation's bicentennial, the NEA was funding "photographic surveys," inspired by the Depression-era photography projects of the Farm Security Administration. Marion Post Wolcott and others captured Kentucky in unflinching black and white images in the '30s and '40s. Wathen needed two more photographers to take on a new survey.

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