MARSHALL, N.C. (WLOS) — Madison County author and photographer Sarah Jones Decker has spent much of the past six months documenting the residents of Marshall as they continue to recover from the devastating floods from Helene.
After the storm passed, Decker quickly began helping her neighbors clean up the mud and debris left behind by the raging waters of the French Broad River.
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However, Decker said there was a voice inside her, saying there was much more she could do to help capture this unprecedented moment in time for those recovering and for future generations.
“As a documentary photographer, I wanted to be everywhere and shoot everything. I was just so overwhelmed with helping that I felt like I wasn’t shooting enough,” she said.
Her initial images were taken primarily with her cell phone; however, there was a new method of making images she had recently learned with the intent of photographing the town’s Mermaid Parade in June that she decided to put into use.
Thus, she began taking tintype portraits of Marshall residents, depicting them through a centuries-old process of image-making that she did out of the back of her car.
“After shooting lots of photos in a more of a documentary style, moving to tintype allowed me to slow down and really be intentional with every single image,” she said.
Some of her work, along with other local artists, is currently displayed at the temporary Madison County Arts Council Welcome Center on Main Street in downtown Marshall, one sign that the town’s recovery is progressing.
Decker said she also has plans for a solo show of her tintype images at the Weizenblatt Gallery at Mars Hill University this fall.
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“The devastation and scope of Helene is suffocating sometimes when you think about how much damage was caused and how widespread it is,” she said. “So to just focus on Marshall and to hyper-focus on our story has been one of the honors of my artistic career.”
To view Decker’s tintype images and learn more about her talents, visit her website.
