Karen Lane is a climber and photographer based in Appalachia, documenting the region's outdoor recreation scene. When she's not at the cliff, she's photographing the cultural landscape of the coast she loves. In 2025, Lane expanded her portfolio to more than rock climbing, and you can look to her social media for updates on a wide breadth of genres from small-town hardcore music shows to coal mine pollution. Offline, she works with local climbing and environmental organizations. You can follow her on Instagram @karenklane.

 

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Q&A with Photographer, Karen Lane

Summit Journal: You’re living what many would consider to be a “dream job”: Climbing photographer. Did you always want to pursue creative expression as a career?

Karen Lane: Not unlike us all in the COVID climate of unemployment, insecurity, and waves of international grief, I definitely did not know what was in store for my future. A ‘career’ felt hopeless. 

I had a background in product design, but the cost of living in a city coupled with a volatile job market drove my interest into something different, so I started working on a vegetable farm in West Virginia. At the farm I had time to think — weeding beds and planting potatoes — time to slow down. I had time outside of work to climb, and photograph my friends climbing, so this is what I did. Sometimes I was paid for my photographs. Freelance photography felt like an escape from wage labor, but of course, it came with its own contradictions. 

Not much has changed for me. I no longer work on the farm, I photograph weddings and do odd photo jobs to pay rent. I use old beat-up camera gear and creativity to make it all work. Occasionally, I get a brief from an outdoor brand for an advertisement and get to show the world my friends and my home. 

My education in product design undoubtedly helps me through the commercial side of photography. The planning and creative direction of a shoot, understanding design theory, and the basics of form, function, composition, color. I enjoy all the elements of production and creation. I love being given a brief, a problem, an idea, and planning every step of the process with constraints to a final creative solution.

My ‘career’ is still insecure. I live in West Virginia, a place most people move away from instead of dive into, but I help build community, live humbly, and I couldn’t be happier. 

 

SJ: Is it a dream job?

KL: “I don’t dream of labor,” as the saying goes. Cliché, I know. I sell my own labor and take the risks that come with that decision for the feeling of freedom. Not unlike climbing. 

[Editor’s note: The saying is often falsely attributed to James Baldwin, but seems to have originated with a viral tweet in 2019, and has resurfaced as a meme a few times since then].

“[It’s] my friend Ronnie Black on a famous route in West Virginia originally named The Racist. Through long chats, education, and above all, patience with an older, whiter generation of route developers, the racist names of many routes in the New River Gorge were changed by the efforts of our community, with direction from Black climbers. This image feels like a small, but important gesture to our future as a community and region with a complex racial history, present, and future,” says Lane. Ad from the inside cover of Summit Journal 320, shot by Karen Lane.

 

SJ: In the photo essay, “Almost Heaven, West Virginia”, in SJ 320 you were quick to point out that your work is not meant to romanticize Appalachia and that you view your role as a documentarian. Having grown up in Virginia and now living in Fayetteville, how does that intimacy with the area influence how you approached this essay and what were you looking to convey through it?

KL: I have complicated thoughts on the landscape and politics of Appalachia, thoughts that are incredibly hard to explain in a few words.

I am a transplant to Appalachia, but not the South. A region defined by its stereotypes and poverty. I am so often gripped by the thought of being an exploiter myself. Extracting images of this place for personal gain and corporations. Like the barons who mine coal off the backs of working people's land and health, I don't want to photograph rock climbing and forget all that is here, a balance I am constantly navigating. 

Climbing in the gorge, you can hear the blasts from the coal mines and hike past old shafts. These contrasts could feel like contradictions, but living here has expanded my mind to understanding class politics and consciousness, an awareness that we are all just working-class people in a struggle against a ruling class, doing our best. 

The essay was images of rock climbing, of people from Fayetteville and Virginia who seek the stone for sanity. This place is just filled so deeply with contradictions and struggle; rock climbing is a momentary panacea for some.

 

SJ: What should more Americans know about Appalachia?

KL: Above anything else, I hope folks seek class consciousness and solidarity with Appalachians. We all have more in common than differences and I hope my images show our likeness. 

By not acknowledging politics in our everyday life, jobs, relationships, sports, it makes us complicit and makes ‘activism’ a lifestyle accessory. It demobilizes movements and hides injustice. 

I am tired of climbers attempting to live separately from politics. And I wanted my essay to show folks a side of Appalachia that wasn’t just Trump flags and opioids. I want climbers to understand this place as complex, beautiful, and worthy of respect. 

Living here makes this separation (climbing from injustice) challenging. Seeing the limitations of neoliberalism and our current system failing people miserably every day is radicalizing, and this radicalization gives me hope and leads my action for the future. 

 

SJ: Maybe you can help us as readers understand what goes into a great photo: What do you look for when you’re photographing?

KL: There's simple tricks to a great shot, lighting, action, composition, but my favorite shots are the ones with a story. Even in my commercial work, I try to tell stories, feeling like yet another contradiction. 

For example, on the inside cover of the first reissue of Summit Journal was an ad, an image of my friend Ronnie Black on a famous route in West Virginia originally named The Racist. Through long chats, education, and above all, patience with an older, whiter generation of route developers, the racist names of many routes in the New River Gorge were changed by the efforts of our community with direction from Black climbers. 

The Racist was changed to Confirmation. Ronnie and I both thought, how cool it would be to photograph him, a Black man, on this route with a new and improved name. This image feels like a small, but important gesture to our future as a community and region with a complex racial history, present, and future.

 

Parker Reed on Temporary Insanity, a 5.13 trad route at South Nuttal, New River Gorge. Photo from “Almost Heaven, West Virginia” by Karen Lane in SJ 320.

 

SJ: If you had to choose one image from your portfolio that most represents the aesthetic or ethos you’re striving for, what would you choose?

KL: I see my work as a collection. A visual representation of a small scene of climbing in WV, no individual image can truly represent it all. I do see my images with Ronnie, Sierra, and specific people who I feel represent the climbing scene here well, as an ethos I am striving for. The people make the images for me. 

SJ: Is print dead?

KL: Print is not dead! This is only the beginning of print. Now more than ever print is important. As print slips away from us with the rise of digital platforms, so does our creativity and autonomy. 

With the rise of AI, I predict brands and companies cutting corners, using AI for ads and media to showcase their products without the photography price tag. Artists, creatives, designers, and all folks in marketing should be skeptical of selling our labor power to a future defined by big tech. 

Digital ownership as a whole is slipping away into rental agreements and subscription fees for access. Owning physical copies of anything will become more and more valuable. Print may be dead for those looking to profit off of people’s subscriptions and attention (landlords of media), but print will become more and more valuable as it is attempted to be erased. 

 

SJ: What can Summit Journal readers expect to see from you next?

KL: I am excited to explore photography as an expression of my politics, document more than rock climbing. In the perfect world I would depart from social media as my primary means of publication. Summit Journal and print media alike can make that dream a reality. 

As I write this about myself and my community, thinking about the future, there is a genocide happening across the Atlantic, not far from our heavy hearts. There is great solidarity between those suppressed within the United States and those oppressed by the iron fist of the U.S. stretched across the sea. I cannot, with good conscience, avoid the immense suffering in Palestine by the hands of the U.S.-backed Israeli State. Solidarity lies within us all, and we all must speak out and take action against this horrific violence. Silence is complicity. 

Free Palestine. 

 

 

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Feature Image: A spread from "Almost Heaven, West Virginia,” a photo essay by Karen Lane, in SJ 320. In the gallery, Lane wanted to showcase climbers from Fayetteville, WV, and Virginia, who “seek the stone for sanity” amid an environment of struggle and beauty.