“Photographs in the South have reflected the patterns and vicissitudes of the weather, both climatic and social-political, throughout our history. And no region’s photographic tradition has been more engaged in, maybe even obsessed with, exploring and reflecting the injuries and scars of time—brought on more specifically by war, bondage, discrimination, class conflicts, and the ravages »
“Like their ancestors for thousands of years, Catawba potters of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries have continued to adapt their material traditions to ever-changing modern contexts. In the process, they create remarkably contemporary works of visual and tactile art.” The Catawba Indian community of York County, South Carolina, is renowned for its elegant, traditional »
“I shot primarily under low light, which allowed mystery to sink into each image and space.” The Wilderness Act of 1964 allowed Americans to enter certain lands, but it also urged them to make their visits brief and leave no mark. My photographs represent the relationship between nature and those traces of cultural objects or »
“The South, of course, is not what it once was.” Many photographers have documented the American South, and the region’s archives reveal scenes of people and places now familiar—rural landscapes, tobacco factories, sharecroppers, the hard-working poor—classic images Marion Post Walcott, Walker Evans, and many others have preserved with powerful lenses. The South, of course, is »
Photo Essay
This essay first appeared in vol. 15, no. 2009 (Summer 2009). Core Sound is a shallow body of water in eastern North Carolina that carries the Core Sound National Seashore on its eastern shoulder and the Carteret County peninsula on its west. Between Beaufort, the mainland town that has prettied itself up over recent decades, »
“Images of a deflated inner tube dropped by the road, a wallet mired, its contents spilling into the mud, footsteps revealed in soft earth, and river-wet clothes wrung, wadded, and cast aside document ordinary things possessed with extraordinary associations of flight, hope, panic, determination, and fear.” Susan Harbage Page’s portfolio, Longing: Personal Effects from the »
“The backstage Dylan—dutifully practicing with harmonica and guitar—wouldn’t have predicted a portfolio that would include forty-five more albums.” Dylan has a backstage smoke in ’63. Mississippi John Hurt sits with guitar case in hand the year before his death. Pete Seeger listens to a young Phil Ochs in ’64. Reverend Gary Davis sleeps on his »
This article first appeared in the Photography Issue (Vol. 17, No. 2: Summer 2011). “It is in fact hard to get the camera to tell the truth; yet it can be made to, in many ways and on many levels. Some of the best photographs we are ever likely to see are innocent domestic snapshots »
“When the color photographs of William Eggleston first appeared at the Museum of Modern Art in 1976, the boldness of Eggleston’s palette and his disregard for the conventions of black-and-white photography were shocking; nearly all the major critics were scornful, and Ansel Adams wrote a scathing letter of protest.” When the color photographs of William »
“In this examination, magic and myth—two of my favorite vehicles—act as buffers to the dominant power structure. It brings together two bodies of collectibles, one personal and one commercial, with the intent of shifting stereotypes about race and southern culture.” This project has its roots in my travels over twenty years to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, »
“Mieth and Smith shared a belief that photography could bring social change. They viewed Pat Clark and Maude Callen as heroic healers whose stories would inspire racial understanding. Both photographers shot powerful images of the most visceral human experiences: birth, death, sexuality, and disease.” In 1940, Life photographer Hansel Mieth traveled to Hell Hole Swamp, »
“‘Rough. It is rough being a female.’” Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. Those were the conditions we worked in at Bollag International Corporation, a textile recycling plant in Charlotte, North Carolina. I photographed and interviewed the women I worked with in 1989 and 1990. The women spent long days standing at tables, »