The South in photographs

Magazine Antiques, July, 1996 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

An exhibition to coincide with the summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, evokes the South in some two hundred photographs taken by both amateurs and professionals. Entitled Picturing the South: 1860 to the Present, it is on view at the High Museum of Art Folk Art and Photography Galleries in Atlanta until September 14. Fittingly, the exhibition catalogue does not seek to define the South's elusive character, but instead includes contributions by six well-known Southern writers that admirably complement the photographs.

The curator of the exhibition, Ellen Dugan, has noted that "Matters of race, religion, family, economic development and environment that have been and continue to be the subject of great national debate are incorporated into the fabric of this region's history and identity. At the same time, from an aesthetic point of view there is probably no region of the country that offers as diverse a landscape and as rich a folk culture."

As the eminent opponent of slavery Cassius Clay, the son of a prosperous Kentucky planter, proclaimed in 1846: "I love the South! And it is because I would make her great and glorious that I thus tell her of her faults." Indeed, it is precisely these extremes that the photographs in this exhibition so successfully convey.

The earliest images in the show date from the Civil War era and represent the work of both anonymous and well-known photographers. The next section is devoted to the difficult years between Reconstruction and the Great Depression, when the South was poised between an agrarian and an industrial age. The next segment treats the pervasive influence of religion on Southern life. Both traditional and more eccentric forms of worship have coexisted there, and the practices of both emerging and established sects are evocatively explored through photographs. One of the themes that photographers have responded to with great sensitivity over the century - and which has fostered the most controversy - is race. Images that reveal the emotional bonds that sometimes existed between whites and their former slaves are poignantly juxtaposed with the first known photograph of a Klu Klux Klansman in a tintype of about 1869.

The catalogue of the exhibition, Picturing the South, 1860 to the Present: Photographers and Writers, is edited by Ellen Dugan and contains writings by her, Charles Reagan Wilson, William Baldwin, A. J. Verdelle, Clyde Edgerton, Willie Morris, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Josephine Humphreys. It has 224 pages, 25 color plates, and 185 black-and-white illustrations. It is co-published by the High Museum of Art and Chronicle Books and may be obtained for $29.95 (paper covers) or $55.00 (hard covers) plus $5.00 for postage and handling from the High Museum of Art, Museum Shop, 1280 Peachtree Street, N.E., Atlanta, Georgia 30309.