DAYTON, OH.- The Contemporary Dayton is presenting Stacy Kranitz: Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down, a landmark multi-year project by Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Stacy Kranitz that challenges long-held stereotypes and assumptions about Appalachia.

Opening as part of the 2026 FotoFocus Biennial: The Long View, the exhibition brings together more than 40 photographs alongside historical archival materials, texts, installation, and a world-premiere film, produced by FilmDayton. Together, these works examine how Appalachia has been represented—and misrepresented—across generations, asking who has had the power to shape the story of the region and what is revealed when those narratives are reconsidered.

Kranitz’s project explores Appalachia as a place shaped by myth, exploitation, resilience, and resistance. Her photographs move between intimate observations of contemporary life and the historical imagery and narratives that have informed perceptions of the region. By bringing these materials into conversation, Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down creates a complex portrait of Appalachia that resists the reductive images that have long defined it in popular culture and media.

The exhibition’s title references the gospel song “Ain’t No Grave,” made famous by Johnny Cash, evoking themes of survival, persistence, and resistance that run throughout Kranitz’s work. The project was also the recipient of the prestigious Images Vevey Book Award, and a companion monograph will be available for purchase in The Contemporary Dayton’s CoSHOP.





Born in Kentucky and based in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee, Kranitz has spent much of her career examining the social, cultural, and environmental forces shaping Appalachia. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous public collections. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship, among numerous other honors.

“Stacy Kranitz asks us to look beyond the familiar images of Appalachia and consider how those images were constructed in the first place,” said Heather Jones, Interim Director and Chief Curator of The Contemporary Dayton. “This exhibition is not simply a documentation of a place. It is an examination of representation itself, of who gets to tell a region’s story, what gets left out, and how photography can complicate the narratives we think we already know.”