Shepherdstown resident Susan Benjamin, right, chats with Shepherd University alumnus Kristian Thacker, at the closing reception for his art show, Anamnesis, in Skull City Studio on Saturday. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Skull City Studio’s latest art show, “Anamnesis,” closed on Saturday, with an artist reception from 5-8 p.m.

The art show, which opened on Aug. 2, featured the work of Shepherd University alumnus Kristian Thacker.

“His work shows how you can take the ordinary and make it extraordinary,” said Madison, Va. resident Sue Berry.

She and her husband, John Berry, drove up to see the show, as John is friends with the studio’s owner, Pang Tubhirun, and the show’s creator. John and Thacker met, while attending the same photography workshop at Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, about 11 years ago.

“For me, this was an opportunity to see a collection of his work that he thinks works together. It was a good reason to come here,” John said. “Kristian and I met in 2014, but haven’t really seen each other since then. It was worth a two hour trip for us.”

Madison, Va. resident Sue Berry studies Kristian Thacker’s photograph, “Value, valued above all,” at the closing reception for the Anamnesis art show in Skull City Studio on Saturday. Photo by Tabitha Johnston

For Thacker, this was the second time this show had been displayed — the first time, being in 2024 at West Virginia University (WVU), as the graduate exhibition for his master’s degree in intermedia and photography.

“I completed this body of work in May of 2024. When I saw that Pang was opening a gallery here, I was very interested, due to the fact that there was never a dedicated gallery space here when I was an undergrad at Shepherd,” Thacker said.

Despite this show having been seen by the public once before, Thacker said it appeared a little different in its second iteration.

“It gave me a chance to rethink this work,” Thacker said. “The sequence of photos stayed pretty much the same, but there were certain elements from the previous exhibition that I left out. I thought it looked better that way.”

The photographs were captured over a three-year span of time, mainly in the central Appalachian region. Together, they spoke of the beauty and tragedies that the photojournalist has witnessed.

“My work examines the duality of living in Appalachia and cherishing its picturesque environment, while being complicit in its ongoing destruction via industry and resource extraction,” Thacker said. “This body of work presents a vision of the region that’s purpose extends beyond value judgments. Rather, it considers the manmade and natural environments of Appalachia holistically, each one integral to the experience and understanding of the other.”

He said that his photographic style reflects a secondary perspective related to this subject.

“Following the same aesthetic choices I make in my professional practice as a photojournalist, I blur the boundary between art and documentation. In this way, I adopt the visual language of the news media, to reframe elements of the region that the media would otherwise ignore, obfuscate or pass judgment on,” Thacker said. “In media, clearcut narratives dictate the story to the reader, but here the content and sequence of the images and footage allows an ambiguity to come forward. This ambiguity accentuates the otherworldly undercurrents in the images, demonstrating the difficulties of defining the region.”

The Ohio Valley native’s work has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Barrons, Bloomberg Businessweek, NPR and The Washington Post. He currently lives in Morgantown, where he teaches photography as an adjunct lecturer in the WVU School of Art and Design.