Rock City Barns: A Passing Era. The book that changed my life.
My career as a photographer began in 1969 in a very modest way, photographing sports and activities at the private school where I was a teacher and selling prints to the students and their families.
I soon left teaching and began trying to get established in professional photography. For several years I worked in advertising and for a studio that made training films, finally opening my own business on January 1, 1978.
In 1982 I began doing advertising
and public relations photography for Rock
City Gardens,
a tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Their principal, and very successful, advertising thrust was painting "See Rock City" on barns all over the southeast.
In 1988, Bill Chapin, then president of See Rock City, Inc., told me about his dream to create a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost. That was the beginning of a process that ended in the publication of a coffee-table book that sold more than 29,000 copies and altered the course of my life.
I've been blessed with a long and interesting (to me, anyway) career, but this was the peak -- my most significant accomplishment. The Rock City Barns book went on to win many honors and awards, including the 1997 Benjamin Franklin Gold Medal Award in the highly competitive Arts category, which includes books about art, music, and photography. Sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association, the award was presented at a banquet in Chicago during the American Booksellers Association national convention. The book also won a Silver Medal in the Travel/Essay category.
Here are some of the comments from reviewers:
"In 'exquisite' photographs and 'warm and gentle' text, Mr. Jenkins captures not only the spirit of the barns, but also the spirit of an era. 'Rock City Barns is a remarkable contribution to the folk culture of this country.' Anyone who remembers the days of two-lane highway travel will find it hard to put down. Nostalgia may not be what it used to be, but these photographs show us that sometimes the past can be even better than we remembered."
In the next two posts, I will retell the story of how the book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era came into being.
Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/
Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia
are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal
address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943
Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how
you would like your book inscribed.
Photography and text copyright 2020-2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.