FACES: Photography of the American South

What defines the American South? American southern identity came to the forefront of national awareness from photography of the Great Depression era. A struggling rural America was depicted by government sponsored projects and photographers, like Walker Evans and the Farm Security Administration (FSA). They captured “objective” scenes and people bearing resilient pride; there resulted a broad, collective idea that the southern vernacular is a paradox: poverty-stricken but dignified, and dispossessed but not downtrodden. 

How has this deep-seated narrative affected the modern perspective? Arising from a double consciousness of their roots, southerners are taking up the lens with a new vision. The two visions are radically opposed and represent differing ideologies. Casting the same subjects in a new light has challenged the vestiges of confirmation bias, which have clouded popular perception. Rather than the outside aestheticization of poverty, new Southern photography claims a heritage of vibrancy, community, and the rich flittings of everyday interactions. Without throwing out the visual identity which defined the region, new Southern photography has embraced a fuller picture of life in Dixie. It speaks to current issues of race, class, and location, while acknowledging the multifaceted dimensions which influence the south’s different faces. Now, we can see the south through their eyes.

[Floyd and Lucille Burroughs on Porch, Hale County, Alabama] 

Walker Evans

1936

Gelatin silver print

18.9 x 23.7 cm (7 7/16 x 9 5/16 in.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Evans’s 1936 photograph is a prime example of old school southern photography. Commissioned under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government and the Federal Security Administration (FSA), Evans intentionally puts forward a specific look: all his subjects bear similarly grim faces.  [Floyd and Lucille Burroughs on Porch, Hale County, Alabama] exhibits the same face as his portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs, Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife. From his aesthetic of naked realism, Evans’s trademark hard-lined, black and white, frontal-facing images branded rural poverty. Evans’s work is the foreground from which later southern photography departs. He shows one face of the South.

Untitled, collection: The Levee

2019.110

Sohrab Hura 

2016 (negative), 2018 (print)

Cincinnati Art Museum

Hura’s recent, untitled photograph black and white photograph plays into the southern expectation set by Evans. Again there are central two figures and dynamic clockwise movement back and forth between them; however, aside front the color and subject, Hura perpetuates the idea of southern struggle. More subtle than Hura’s photograph of a southern boy literally weighed down by the mattress upon his back, here he tells a story of an elderly woman attempting to get from the car to her destination. We take on the struggle as if we are her: in a world of gray, caught between poles and pavement and wires, and feeling each rigid bump of the walker hitting the sidewalk. We see the man’s face and furrowed brow. The sentiment is the same, even if his gaze is not directed out at the viewer.

Garlic

Keith Carter

1991

The Bitter Southerner, The Do Good Fund Collection

Keith Carter’s photograph “Garlic” showcases the vivacity missing from previously known southern photography. This is spirit. The posture of raised arms suggests victory and vigor. The eyes are drawn vertically up from the clothing’s stripes to the  the raised garlic, which reinforces the hope and triumph of the photograph. Also, the depiction of an African American subject deviates from the norm set by Evans and others. Rather than a story of struggle, Carter’s photograph “Garlic” is a celebration.

Family at Klan Rally, South Carolina

[c. 1975]

Dennis Darling

The Bitter Southerner, The Do Good Fund Collection

Darling’s photograph Family at Klan Rally, South Carolina, taken about 1975, contrasts with Evans’s vision. Darling captures the image of a family. A boy is grinning at girl, possibly his sister. She beams out at the camera. There are others cut out from the photograph, lending a sense of the abundance of community. The frame is filled from edge to edge with people. There is belonging and joy. Despite the acknowledgement that evil and suffering still exist in the south, as is evident by the KKK sign on the back of the truck, Darling provides a bigger picture. Unlike Evans’s glaring faces, Darling depicts grinning ones.

Blue Alabama

2017

Andrew Moore

The Bitter Southerner

In Blue Alabama, Moore captures the significance of place. The South refers not only to the people which reside there, but also the physical embodiment of the land. The land itself is a face. Rather than the close-framed photographs which dominated former southern photography, the frame is expanded. It includes not just the trailer, as a symbol of social status, but the trailer’s placement in nature, in vivid color. The trees are lush, tall, and virident. The viewer’s eyes are beckoned from the crips white trailer to the puffy spots of white clouds over the treeline. And the sky is blue. Alabama is not just black and white and impoverished. This is Blue Alabama.

Untitled, collection: Blue Alabama

2017

Andrew Moore

The Bitter Southerner

Andrew Moore’s untitled photograph pictures the aftermath of the former Snow Hill Institute, founded for specifically African American education. After desegregation, the school closed; however, Moore captures the renewed life and vitality in something thought dead. A far cry from Evans’s black and white, forlorn photographs, Moore photograph depicts a large spectrum of color. People play on a dilapidated basketball court. The viewer is caught, suspended as the ball about to swish through the basket. Moore gives a moment caught in time. Rather than Evans’s carefully constructed vision of static reality, Moore offers an observation of renewed life.