To render a humane portrait of West Virginia and its people is to promise disappointment. The poet Muriel Rukeyser knew this as early as 1938, interrupting her own matter-of-fact description of West Virginia’s plainness from The Book of the Dead to question her readers’ expectations: “What do you want – a cliff over a city? A foreland sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?”

Matt Eich’s photographs of Webster county, West Virginia, taken in July and December in 2018 in collaboration with poet Doug Van Gundy, contain similar questions.

If you look at Webster county on a map, you’ll see more than 500 square miles of forest nestled between rivers and mountains, and leaving the county requires a long crossing of one or the other. The county seat, Webster Springs, has just under 700 residents. The county is overwhelmingly white, and the per-capita income is just $12,284. This makes Webster county, with a median household income of $21,055, the fourth poorest county in West Virginia; 31% of residents are below the poverty line, including 40% of the county’s children.

Abandoned book, Webster county, West Virginia.

The county’s most important link to the mining industry, a surface mine owned by Arch Coal, closed in 2012 and with it went 150 jobs. Timber, however, has long been the county’s primary economic force. Over 93% of the county is forest and timber companies own more than half of all private land, providing in return seasonal employment at five area sawmills. Much of the timber harvested in Webster county is destined to become high-end furniture, the kind that mill workers and loggers can’t afford.

“They have no idea of the men and machinery, the sweat and labor, the diesel fumes and distance involved,” Van Gundy writes, imagining the consumers of Webster county’s bounty.

Timber is cleaner than coalmining, but most communities in West Virginia have faced struggles connected to the totalizing nature of the extraction economy.

They are also attempting to go against the problem of image-making in the state, which is often about capturing the idea of West Virginia rather than its complexities. The most widely circulated version of the state is one that looks like it deserves to face its own oblivion, for its politics or economy or outdated modes of existence. But what if it doesn’t look like that at all? What if it looks like ordinary things, like young love and fair weather, like clean countertops at a crowded diner?

Left: Melinda and Michael, Webster Springs, West Virginia Right: Butterflies, Webster Springs, West Virginia

There’s a habit to simply go bleak, however, as places like Webster county depend on boom-bust industries not just for jobs, but for tax revenue that funds municipal services like schools and roads. And with a population that’s been shrinking since the 1960s, the tax base created by property owners and small businesses is currently not enough to sustain basic government functions.

In 2016, Webster county found itself $1.48m in debt to its regional jail authority, a sum that reflects the collision of old and new realities. Communities financially depleted by population loss and the decline of industry are now facing the devouring health crisis of opioid addiction. Claiming more than 20% of all fentanyl deaths in the entire state, arrests are up and elected magistrates favor harsher drug sentences.

Left: Misty and Valerie, Webster Springs, West Virginia. Right: Lisa, Webster Springs, West Virginia

For more than 70 years, West Virginians have experienced both the economic push to leave and, for many, a fierce desire to stay. West Virginia is currently the only state shrinking from both natural population decline – there are more deaths than births – and out migration. The presumed fates of people who live in places such as Webster county become anchored to abstract debates about who and where is worth saving.

What if, instead, images of West Virginia make it look like a place where people live? Not trapped in limbo, their fates sealed, but a place where roofs get repaired and wind chimes hung, a place that looks like other communities which, perhaps, are not so often visually consumed with implicit despair in mind.

In 1900, the Webster Echo celebrated its community as “rich in everything that goes to make a people happy and comfortable”. Eich’s photographs are piercing because they move against the grain to dignify people who still imagine that could be true. This West Virginia looks like a place where, instead of running out, life goes on.

– Elizabeth Catte

Reflections in a storefront in Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Marshall, Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Outside of the Main Street Cafe, Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Young people play basketball on a summer afternoon in Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Cemetery in Webster county, West Virginia.

An elderly woman holds onto a post for support on the porch outside her home in Webster county, West Virginia.

Keith on his motorcycle, Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Class pictures from Webster Springs high school in Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Left: Parking lot in Webster Springs, West Virginia. Right: County clerk’s office in Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Left: Jerry Moffit in Webster county, West Virginia. Right: Eggs, Diana, West Virginia.

Left: Maintenance in Webster Springs, West Virginia. Right: Hometown Diner, Diana, West Virginia.

Fog on the mountains, Webster county, West Virginia.

Retired Reverend Gerald in Diana, West Virginia.

Brody and Jeffrey, Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Children before a theater performance at Webster Springs elementary, Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Jeff Hines fills a grave in a cemetery near Webster Springs, West Virginia.

Sunset in Webster county, West Virginia.

This article was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the Puffin Foundation and the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.