I’ve known Trace Ramsey since the first Crop Mob in October 2008. I’m not sure that we actually met that day, anyone that knows Trace knows he’s not a talker. But Trace has a presence about him, a weighty silence as he works the red clay of Chatham County, NC punctuated by the click of his camera. The images he captures speak his voice and the voices of many others breathing life into a movement.

From 6-9pm on this Friday October 15th, Trace opens his first solo exhibit New Blood for the Old Body- Photography from inside the new agrarian movement at Hotel Hadley Studios in Siler City, NC. Going through Trace’s photographs one can’t help but notice a parallel to the photography of the Farm Security Administration, the New Deal program that attempted to collectivise agriculture and sent photographers to document the effects of the great depression on rural people. It is these iconic FSA images that gave a face to the great depression. It’s interesting that now at the time of the greatest economic turmoil since the depression images of a similar style are speaking to people but the message they convey is drastically different. The labor is similar, the tired bodies and dirty knees are the same, but the emotional tenor of the photographs is different. The faces of these new agrarians express hope, possibility, strength, determination, and joy. It’s not that exhaustion, heartbreak, and sorrow are absent from their lives but these feelings don’t consume them.