Shelby Lee Adams

Shelby Lee Adams is an American environmental portrait photographer born in Kentucky in 1950, best known for his black-and-white photographs of Appalachian family life since the mid-1970s. Inspired by the Farm Security Administration's Depression-era photography and a Peace Corps documentary on Appalachian poverty, he has devoted his career to documenting the people and culture of Appalachia, capturing both traditional folkways and the region's transformation through modernization.