The first time I met Tony, he was reading a magazine—The Racing Pigeon—sitting on his back stoop in the afternoon sun. It wasn’t late, maybe two or two-thirty, but on this side of the river, the sun goes down early in November. He was, it appeared to me, trying to soak up as much of it as he could in the dying days of autumn. As it turned out, Tony spent most of his time on that stoop, but I wasn’t to know that at the time. His house was the last residential vestige of a previous age that had given way to kudzu vines and gravels pits, so it was startling to see such a domestic scene.  I ended up talking with Tony for almost two hours. We spoke about his past, the history of the town, pottery-making and pigeon-racing. He spoke with a mixture of nostalgia, resignation and pride. Some of the stories he told me I knew were bullshit. Some of the stories he told me he knew were bullshit. It didn’t matter.

-David Bernstein, 2023

Walker’s Vein is a book of photographs and text that investigates how the past is remembered. It takes place around the turn of the second millennium, in a fictional town along the Ohio River where Appalachian sensibilities intersect with Rust-Belt economics. Juxtaposing the moments that define small-town life against the impassive march of geological time, Walker’s Vein explores how collective identity is formed.

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ISBN: 978-1-959684-00-8
Dimensions: 8 x 13 inches
Number of pages: 88 with three foldouts
Binding: Hardcover

Design: Caleb Cain Marcus/Luminosity Labs