Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - 5:00pm
Since 1983 David Wharton has photographed the twelve states that define
the American South, focusing his attention on rural and small-town
culture, vernacular architecture and landscape, the role of religion in
Southern life, and the relationship between Southerners, their natural
surroundings, and the communities they have built. Small Town South is
the result of Wharton's travels through a region that extends from
Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas in the west to Virginia and the Carolinas
in the east, from Kentucky and Tennessee in the north to Florida in the
south, with Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia forming the region's
center in between. No other photographer has devoted so much time and
attention to recording this distinctive American place. The 115 duotone
photographs which serve as the book's core, combined with the author's
insightful text, convey an overall sense of what the small Southern town
has become and looks like during the early twenty-first century.
Wharton organizes his study into thematic portfolios that address themes
such as the intersection of tradition and modernity, local
commemorations of the past, the omnipresence of the church in town life,
the difficulties of making a living in the New World economy, the look
of Main Street, the display of public murals and memorials, and the
iconographic unfolding of community values.Many have likened Wharton's
photographic eye and approach to the work of other photographic masters
of the South, including Walker Evans, Eudora Welty, William
Christenberry, Shelby Lee Adams, Alex Harris, Rob Amberg, and Martha A.
Strawn. And, just as we turn to those artists to help us understand and
reckon with Southern history and culture, we now can look to David
Wharton as another pioneer photographer of the Southern small town in
all its simplicity and complexity.
Event address:
160 Courthouse Sq
38655-3914 Oxford
usBooks:
$50.00
ISBN: 9781938086090
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: George F Thompson Publishing - November 1st, 2012