Three years ago, photographer Aaron Blum set out to make a series of photographs comparing portraits of Appalachians to Appalachian salamanders. Born in West Virginia, Blum was familiar with the terrain as home to one of the most diverse populations of the species, and envisioned that this might help him understand how geography and environment could influence regional identification. But he soon found this limiting, and his work evolved into his ongoing project A Guide to Folk Taxonomy something much deeper than a literal comparison.
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