“At every turn in this country, there was a branch, a slough, a poquoson, a swamp, and most of us sensed that we did not simply live near swamp—we belonged to it.” Gaither’s Lagoon, a small, dark backwater off the Pasquotank River in northeastern North Carolina, was less than two blocks from my childhood home »
“These wartime memorials represent the earliest efforts to [illuminate] the sentiments of soldiers who memorialized their very recently fallen comrades and the heroic events of the war on the very ground where the historic actions occurred.” The New York Times was wrong in more than one respect when it heralded the dedication of two monuments »
Photo Essay
I was in second grade in Kentucky when my friend Bobby invited me to spend Friday night with him and go fish a farm pond the next morning. His father, a long haul truck driver, was off work for the weekend and drove us some thirty miles out of town where we baited simple bream »
“Now, my momma’s pumps are buried with her, that and her whip is buried with her . . . She asked if we would put that in with her.” Often referred to as Little Dixie, the southeastern corner of Oklahoma is home to more than just customs stemming from Native American influences in the 1800s »
“The strumming of stringed instruments booms out through the PA, elaborate fiddle melodies erupt, followed by the soaring voice of the poet-practitioner, embracing those present, scanning the scene before him . . . drifting, shaping, moving verses that elicit a chorus of gritos.” It’s a typical sweltering July evening in central Texas, close to ten »
“[T]he sweaty, aromatic ‘Bull Durham’ of old . . . existed even as today’s ‘City of Medicine’ was emerging.” The old saying “f/8 and be there” applies to these photos. In the early to mid 1980s, I was doing street photography in downtown Durham. Especially compelling was the warehouse district, home of the muscular, oversized »
Photo Essay
“It is the sense of place going with us still that is the ball of golden thread to carry us there and back and, in every sense of the word, to bring us home.” —Eudora Welty, “Place in Fiction,” 1957 Food is the sensory landscape of Laos. In the city streets of Vientiane, smoke rises »
“They warned me that I’d never get the real history the way I was going about it. They said I needed to capture the story. I listened. And I stepped on a wellspring.” January 2013, Chicago, Illinois. I was sitting in Mr. William Schaffer’s apartment conducting my survey. He was eighty-six years old at the »
“At eighteen years old, Mormon Elders are still developing physically and spiritually while working to share their gospel in a culture far from home.” Last year I crossed paths with Mormon missionaries who live in my apartment complex. Having been raised in the Mormon Church, I expressed interest in documenting their ministry in an effort »
“The camera became my excuse to talk to the beauty queens, fine artists, musicians, rebels, angels, and street preachers of my community.” Inside the Cat Square Superette, above the meat counter, under the garish fluorescent lights and a watercolor painting of the store, a plaque lists four decades of Cat Square mayors. Among them is »
“‘No, I don’t want my picter took. / Gwine all round in de paper and de book—/ Ever-body knowin’ des how I look.’” Hale County, Alabama. For many, the words conjure images of Allie Mae Burroughs’s face. Appearing older than her twenty- seven years, she stands before an unpainted clapboard house staring straight into Walker »
“‘This house is as old as my grandma. This house is like a junkyard. This house is like an animal in the woods. This house is as raggedy as an old car. This house is as ugly as an ugly tree.’” Like many towns in the Mississippi Delta, Tutwiler, Mississippi, is a sparsely populated community »