Frontier Nursing Service, Kentucky 1937

This photograph was taken by Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, showing the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky. It’s a documentary image, in black and white, of a log cabin nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. I can imagine Patterson, lugging her camera gear up the hillside, framing this shot. She’s capturing a moment of everyday life. I am wondering what it must have been like for her to visit this place? What stories did she hear? What did it feel like to meet the nurse, arriving to help those in need? I wonder about the journey she took and the impact it must have had on her life. It makes me think about the role of photography in bearing witness, capturing not just images, but also the untold stories of the human experience, of the past, and of the world we live in. It can have a profound influence on how we understand each other.