Southern Ohio’s Appalachia is a magical place for me. Nestled in some of the most beautiful countryside in the state, with a natural beauty and a stoic people who are unforgettable. In 1971, I began photographing here while attending Ohio University in Athens. I left there in 1974 to travel to Colorado, returning only once in 1975, then in November of 2008, over thirty years later. During my drive from Western MA, I contemplated the “gentrification” that had to have occurred there and regretted that I could never experience the wonderful environment and people that I had know years earlier. Was I surprised! In the small communities around Nelsonville and Athens where I documented the faces and families that I had encountered years earlier, there was at best, little or no change, certainly not change one would call gentrification. To me, life stood still, if not moved backwards.