John Cohen photographs | Kentucky Life | KET

New Yorker John Cohen first came to Eastern Kentucky in the late 1950s with a still camera and an eye for capturing the region's landscape, people, and music. In 2012 his iconic photos were displayed at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

Whether it's a front porch gathering, prayer in church, farm work, or a walk down a mountain road, his black-and-white images capture the beauty of mountain life—traditions he embraced as a folk musician himself.

Now 80 years old, Cohen played banjo as a teenager and studied painting and photography at the Yale School of Fine Arts. He started the folk group the New Lost City Ramblers with Mike Seeger and Tom Paley in 1958. He first visited Kentucky in 1959 looking for old-time music.

He returned to visit Appalachia in the 1960s and documented the cultural music scene, coining the phrase "the high lonesome sound" to describe the stark, tender music of the region. He also produced a film of the same name profiling musician Roscoe Holcomb.

His photos have been exhibited in museums across the country and in Europe. The UK exhibit, "The High Lonesome Sound," marked the first time these photos were exhibited in Kentucky, according to Cohen. We caught up with Cohen at the exhibit and talked to him about his experiences documenting Kentucky's mountain music.