First edition, 2014 - MACK, London. Hardcover with coloured boards. Out-of-print, collectible item in excellent condition. Part of the publishers rare book collection. ABOUT THE BOOK: Moonshine is the illegally produced, homemade whisky, which has been distilled in the American Appalachians for centuries. Tucked away at the back of every refrigerator in Kentucky, Tennessee or West Virginia, you might find two or three large apple-juice bottles filled to the brim with what looks like water. The clearer the liquid, the stronger the alcohol content. This is a portrait of the American Appalachian folk. A mythologised region populated by ‘moonshiners’. Van Manen first visited the region in 1985 and returned periodically up until 2013 to visit mining families with whom she lived, like the Boggs family with their ten red-haired sons and miners Mavis and Junior. The intergenerational images subtly trace the insidious changes undergone in Appalachia – the slow and steady demise of the mining industry, and the migration of inhabitants from ramshackle wooden cabins to the city, or urban trailer parks. ABOUT THE ARTIST: Bertien van Manen is a Dutch photographer. She started her career as a fashion photographer, after having studied French and German languages and literature. Inspired by Robert Frank's The Americans she travelled around, photographing what she saw. She had her first exhibition in The Photographers' Gallery in London in 1977 and since then her work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Fotomuseum Winterthur. Van Manen's work is found in major public collections. ABOUT THE PUBLISHER: MACK is an independent publisher of award-winning books on visual art and architecture.