Automobiles in the Photographs of Reverend L. O. Taylor
by Emily Ridder-Beardsley
In one of his most compelling and enigmatic photographs, Reverend Lonzie Odie Taylor (1899–1977) sits on the running board of his car, fist under his chin. A Baptist minister and self-taught African American photographer, Taylor’s photographs—including his self-portraits—reflect desires and aspirations for material success in a rapidly modernizing South, including for cars. In offering mobility, »
Manifest is an ongoing project, a portfolio of nearly one hundred photographs of African American material culture held in public and private collections throughout the United States. These repositories have accumulated diaries, receipts for the purchase of humans, hair, a drum, a door, photographs, figurines, and other artifacts—some with great historical significance, some the commonplace, »
I think I’d been there five minutes when Larry pulled up alongside me in a golf cart, abruptly. My camera dangled from my neck as I approached him. “You know there’s a fifty dollar fine for taking photos in Love Valley.” “Oh, well . . . I didn’t think . . .” I muttered. “I’m »
Across the Rio Grande at El Paso, Texas—a city so named because it was the crossing Spaniards used to reach the country north and west of the river—sits its sister city, Ciudad Juárez. Before the Mexican-American War, the river was simply a geographical barrier within Mexico, so both sides were the same town. Today, the »
Elaine McMillion Sheldon and I are both daughters of West Virginia, young Appalachians who want to fight for our home but who also struggle to find our paths back to it. I have not lived in West Virginia for almost fourteen years; Elaine, the more peripatetic of us, now does, but when we began this »
The New Vrindaban is a Krishna community in the hills of Appalachia, the vision of A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder and spiritual leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The New Vrindaban in West Virginia is the realization of Prabhupada’s dream to establish a holy pilgrimage site in North America. It was »
The Appalachian Urban Folk Photography of Isaiah Rice
by Darin Waters,
Gene Hyde,
Kenneth Betsalel
After her mother Jeroline Rice passed in 2003, Marian Waters sorted through boxes of photographs that her father Isaiah Rice had taken over the course of his adult life. Rice, who died in 1980, had taken hundreds of photographs of family, friends, and strangers in his Asheville, North Carolina community. While Waters always knew her »
While working as part of the Student Action with Farmworkers program between his junior and senior year of college, Kyle was placed with Southern Migrant Legal Services, based in Nashville, Tennessee. Through his work, he met frequently with farmworkers contracted under the H-2A and H-2B guest worker programs across a five-state area, investigated farms historically »
“I passed the sign frequently and always noticed its beautiful lettering. Finally, I stopped and photographed it, thankfully, because the sign is now gone.” Editor’s Note: Outtakes from The South in Color, published by UNC Press, September 2016. This stockman’s cane was made by Victor “Hickory Stick” Bobb out of hickory wood (1976). Mr. Bobb »
by Trevor Schoonmaker,
Stacy Lynn Waddell,
Jeff Whetstone
“Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art” was co-curated by Trevor Schoonmaker (Nasher Museum of Art) and Miranda Lash (Speed Art Museum). Before the show opened in September 2017, we sat down with Schoonmaker and artists Stacy Lynn Waddell and Jeff Whetstone, both featured in the exhibition. “We have no idea what it »
Honoring William Christenberry (1936–2016) Bill Christenberry was like a spiritual brother who explored his homeland in Hale County, Alabama, with a keen eye. Each summer he returned to document and photograph these familiar worlds. With his meticulous eye, he showed the weight of time on this landscape, tracking change as paint faded and peeled on »
Over our 22-year history, we’re proud to have published 22 articles by our esteemed colleague and friend William Ferris—from interviewing B.B. King to finding Faulkner in Bulgaria. William Ferris is one of the greatest documentarians of the twentieth-century South. His collection of photographs, audio, film, and writings at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Southern Folklife Collection encompasses some »
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