Madison County . Please note:   Life Force magazine is greatly supported by you looking at our advertising which is free to view. Madison County by Harvey Wang In 1976, as a photography/anthropology student at Purchase College in New York, I embarked on an extended visit to Madison County, North Carolina, to document "folk culture" in this isolated Appalachian community.  Madison County is in the western part of North Carolina north of Asheville, on the border with Tennessee.  Up until recently, no major roads went through the county, and due to geographical isolation, many of the ways of the original settlers (who had come from Ireland, England and Scotland via the northern states) were passed down for generations.  Madison was also a holdout of a type of singing that had passed down to the inhabitants of the remote parts of the county from their British and Scottish ancestors.  In 1916, the great English ballad collector Cecil Sharp visited Madison where he collected 260 tunes, many from families I was documenting during my stay there. I worked in Madison County with Robert Balsam, a fellow-student and musician from Purchase, and we mounted an exhibit of photos and recorded music at the Neuberger Museum on the campus of Purchase College in Westchester in January of 1977.  This was my first museum exhibition, and the photographs displayed, for the most part, have never been published. Bleachers, Marshall, NC, 1976 Boy at Tomato Shed, Spring Creek, NC, 1976 Bulls Gap Racetrack, TN, 1976 Cas Wallin preaching, Sodom, NC 1976 County Fair, Murphy, NC, 1976 Dellie & Glenna, Sodom, NC, 1976 Dillard Chandler at the Barber, Asheville, NC, 1976 Ernie Franklin and his dog, Madison County, NC, 1976 Farmer and son, Big Pine, NC, 1976 Girl with Banjo, Sodom, NC, 1976 Hot Springs, NC, 1976 License Plates, Madison County, NC, 1976 Little League, Marshall, NC, 1976 Man Plowing, Big Pine, NC, 1976 Marshall, 1976 Marshall, NC, 1976 Walnut, NC, 1976 Young Mother, Shelton-Laurel, NC, 1976