Isaiah Rice

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Isaiah Rice (1917–1980) was an American photographer who photographed people and neighborhoods in Asheville, western North Carolina. He helped document Black Appalachian communities from a Black perspective. Rice was born in Asheville and went to Stephens-Lee High School. During the Great Depression he worked for the Works Progress Administration. He served in World War II and was a member of St. Paul’s Missionary Baptist Church in West Asheville. He died in 1980 from a heart attack.

Rice's photos include family and friends, his church, schoolchildren, pets, still lifes, portraits, parades, street life, and workers. He has been described as an "urban folk photographer" because he recorded everyday life in his community.

In 2015, his daughter Marian Rice Waters and his grandson Darin Waters donated a collection of Rice's photos to UNC Asheville's Special Collections to be digitized, archived, and selectively shown. The online collection is available through UNC Asheville's Special Collections and was archived May 8, 2019, on the Wayback Machine. The collection highlights Asheville neighborhoods like Burton Street and Shiloh. Waters said the collection shows the African-American experience through the eyes of a "very middle-class," forward-thinking family.