Epitaph
Minolta Autocord Arista B&W 400
I want to take more photographs. I want to create everyday. I can’t and that can be frustrating. I am trying to figure out what about a scene draws me to it. Is it the subject matter, the light, the textures, or some intangible element? I know subconsciously I am processing what I do, I just need to sit down and think consciously about it. What elements are in one of my photographs that makes an impression on me? Figuring that out will help me be more attuned to my surroundings. I photograph the South as I see it. My vision of it is mine, it is personal and I have my own reasons to why I feel the way I do. A running theme through my work is death. It could be moral, spiritual, cultural, or physical. Death comes in many forms. It carries the connotation of sadness, but it is not always necessarily a bad thing. It is always emotional though, and I think this is what speaks to me.
Your primary focus in your photography is the South, and it is nearly impossible to focus on the South as a subject without having the aspect of death as part of your photos. If you tried to stay away from death as subject matter, you would be projecting an extremely inaccurate picture of the South, and you would end up with a lot of really trite photos!
I think a lot of people who aren’t from the South don’t understand what it is like to be a Southerner. Sure, we are hundreds of years past the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement (for the most part) drastically changed racial tensions in the South. However, there is still an underlying sadness that stems from hundreds and hundreds of years of oppression and torture of countless, innocent people, plus a terrible war, which can’t be erased. Most of us are torn between loving a land that belonged to our hard-working ancestors, and feeling a certain amount of sadness that we come from a culture that oppressed so many people. I think your photos, especially as of late, do a beautiful job of illustrating a sweet sadness, but also a great deal of pride and hope. It’s definitely a balancing act, but you balance all of these ideas very well in your images.