Black Diamonds

Black Diamonds is a personal endeavor to connect with the Appalachian region Facun now calls home. As a person of color, he defines his community based on personal experience diverging from the stereotypes of race, religion, gender, and politics that are often attached to the region by outsiders. His images hint at life as it once was, sharing the hyperrealism of what it is today and the uncertainty of what it is to become in the coal mining boomtowns of bygone days. Life in Appalachia is fraught with mystery and mischaracterization. Yet, in all his interactions, the simple needs of day-to-day survival loom larger than the abstract issues of politics. The images strive for an understanding of people and place in these rural, isolated foothills pocked with poverty; where a heritage of hospitality, not hate, is an unspoken psalm.

Rich-Joseph Facun is a photographer of Indigenous Mexican and Filipino descent. His work aims to offer an authentic look into endangered, bygone, and fringe cultures—those transitions in time where places fade but people persist. The exploration of place, community, and cultural identity present themselves as a common denominator in both his life and photographic endeavors. Facun attended Ohio University where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Visual Communication. Before finding home in the Appalachian Foothills of Southeast Ohio, Facun roamed the globe for 15 years working as a photojournalist. His photography has been commissioned by various publications including NPR, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and more. Additionally, his work has been recognized by Photolucida’s Critical Mass, The Washington Post, Feature Shoot, The Image Deconstructed, The Photo Brigade, and Pictures of the Year International. Alison Stine is the author of the novel Trashlands (MIRA / HarperCollins), longlisted for the 2022 Reading the West Book Award, a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award, and longlisted for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. Her next novel Dust will be published by Wednesday Books (Macmillan) in 2024. She is also the author of three poetry collections and a novella. Her plays and original musicals have been produced at community and regional theaters, and Off-Broadway . Recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Ohio Arts Council, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a Ruth Lilly Fellow, and received the Studs Terkel Award. In 2022, she was voted Top Author by 5280 magazine. Partially deaf, she has been a staff culture writer at Salon, and has reported for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, 100 Days in Appalachia, and more. Currently, she is a staff writer at Nonprofit Quarterly. She was raised in rural Ohio and presently lives with her family in Colorado.