Funny how some of these commenters have never seen a map.
I loved this essay, and I hope the exhibit travels north.
Lovely. More pure photography in the NYT would be enjoyed by this reader and perhaps others.
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@tigershark, I agree!
Let's not continue the canard of racism existing only in the South. Check out the headlines this very day from Dorchester, Mass.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
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Houston is not the South. This article was written by someone who doesn’t understand the cultural subtleties of the South and Texas.
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El Paso, Texas is definitely not in the South, geographically, culturally or otherwise.
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@Elizabeth hughes Houston is totally the South. It has fantasies of being the West, but it's the Gulf South.
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Nice photographs and yet, part of what makes William Christenberry, William Eggleston, Deborah Luster, and Sally Mann's work more powerful/iconic is that even if the South is changing, their work still seems fresh and timely, and has as much to say about life in the South as it is still today in many senses as these photographs do.
I’ve seen the exhibition in its entirety several times. I’ve had students see this exhibition. The images in the article are only the smallest of sampling of what is in this exhibition. The diversity of images, voices, and mediums reflecting the changing South. This exhibition is presented at a time when the South is questioning itself. Yes it is. Richard McCabe has done a wonderful job bringing this exhibition together. He is passionate about Southern Photography. Yes it is important to say Southern Photography. The history of images, and image making in the South is wrought with the layers of violence, poverty, oppression, racism, community, story telling, uniqueness. All serving as postcards or justification for how the South has been seen. These images and artists are about the self reflection. El Paso may not be “Deep South”, but Texas, Texas is part of the narrative of the South. Borders, and changing demographics are part of the South. The dichotomy of rich and poor, violence and safety in that body of work, that is Southern. The root of photography is in the South. Search for Jules Leon. A free man of color who had one of the first daguerreotype studios in the US...in New Orleans. Wonderful work, and a wonderful exhibition.
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Some of these photos would have resulted in violence if shown earlier in my lifetime. Banality is a medium.
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Well, if the images were intentionally trying to capture how banal life can be in the USA--job done. Sleepy pictures.
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Thanks. I need this photographic break from the daily news.
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El Paso is not the "South."
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@R. Vasquez
No kidding. I was born in Mississippi and grew up in Central Texas. El Paso is not even remotely the South. It's much nicer too.
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@R. Vasquez For some of us, Sir, the South is anywhere west of NJ & east of California, with a few island oases, think Colorado, in between.
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Lens is a superb, wonderful part of the paper. It is worth the subscription as a contrast to the news but more as the real exhibition of what people of talent and humanity can give the world. Thank you in abundance! Fascinating choices. More, more.
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Photography refuses.
The Impressionist movement began officially with a salon of paintings rejected by the academic judges - the "refuses".
This escape into recognition will never happen to photography, although I hear the wistful hopes in this show's generation.
Photography, to misquote Picasso, is a truth that points to a lie. The lies are losing their constituencies. The truths are small, quick, and avoid capture
Any photo exhibit, essay, image in the moment can only represent itself. What can you say that will still be true when a "photo" is an interference pattern within the quantum circuits of your amygdala - set off by the encounter of a gamma ray with the artist's reference pattern stabilized in a starter bed of man-in-the-moon marigolds?
Every new photograph is a wanted poster. It wanted its moment. It just couldn't be more. It just can't.
It can't North or South or change or stasis or human or inhuman. It can't new or old or best or worst.
Photography refuses. That's its real power, and why it outlives the categories and metaphors of spoken and written language.
Snap. You're it!
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@Tiresias
OMG, that was exactly what I was going to say.
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@Tiresias-Took the words right out of my mouth.
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Except for the 'Giving Tree" photo, and then only because of the Spanish moss, I don't think there is anything here that could not be seen on a daily, ad hoc basis in and around Philadelphia.
If that is the point, then okay, I suppose.
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@Allen A lot of these pics also reminded me of rural and urban Ohio.
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I guess I don’t understand the “southern-ness” either. What, exactly, makes these photos emblematic of the changing South? To my untrained eye, they could have been taken in Philadelphia, or rural Ohio, or just off I 70 somewhere in between.
It would be nice if someone more cultured and erudite than I am could stop, just for a minute, and explain to dumb folks like me why these photos are so groundbreaking and how I can recognize them for what the author thinks they are.
Pleased to see that my county of Hale County, Alabama, gets its mention. Well, it should, what with Walker Evans and William Christenberry. And coming up soon, the poetic documentary movie "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" and Andrew Moore's photographic essay on the Alabama Black Belt, "Blue Alabama." (For a good sampling of his photos see his article in "Bitter Southerner.") Moore once told me that Hale County is one of the most fascinating places in America. Things are happening here. Among others, there's Auburn's Rural Studio and Project Horseshoe Farm. Check out both!
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