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, »
“It requires very special talent to make great photographs, and those who have it are among our finest artists.” What is it about photographs? They have been around since the 1830s but still seem far more novel than paintings or drawings. Photography equipment can be cheap and simple and takes no special talent to use, »
“Photography in its finest and most decisive moments is about those tired or ignored or unseen parts of our lives, the mundane and worn paths that sit before us so firmly that we cease to notice. It is, we might say, about rebuilding our sight in the face of blindness, of recovering our collective vision.” »
“Many years ago I concluded that for me truth and beauty, and perhaps wit and wisdom as well, are more likely to reside in what is ordinary and seemingly insignificant. This is, perhaps, a sideways look at America and American culture, but it is one that can produce moments that describe us all—but without makeup »
“‘Well, of course I remember Pearl Harbor,’ my mother says, the tone of her voice adding, What do you think I am, an idiot? She and my grandmother were working in the shop when they heard on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. She was five months pregnant with me. It was »
“Jimmy ‘Catfish’ Hunter pitched for the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees and in 1987 was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame – all the while maintaining his small-town farming roots. He played every game with the shotgun pellets from a childhood hunting accident lodged in his foot, and natives imagined he held »
“. . . for ten millennia, the bones seemed wreckage from a mighty dream . . .” Big Bone LickAt Big Bone Lick the first explorersfound skeletons of elephants they said,found ribs of wooly mammoths, tusks.They dug out teeth the size of bricksand skulls of giant bison, beavers.
“Cooney Simms, the grocer, had a big Philco floor-model radio with push buttons and short wave. Neighbors gathered around when Joe Lewis was fighting. And wasn’t he always, this good giant who whipped Adolph Hitler’s man Max Schmeling? Static wasn’t too bad; one could hear Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats if they didn’t come on the »