A Long Arc

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
~William Faulkner, “Requiem for a Nun”

By Suzanne Révy and Elin Spring

The gardens are lush and the air sticky with humidity, swamps are drenched in fecund fauna while mists and fog slither across valleys and mountains. Everything is languid here, the inflection of speech, the pace and the ethos. Personal stories of suffering and redemption endure in the wake of looming, often uncomfortable histories. “A Long Arc: Photography in the American South since 1845” mines the contradictions and grace of southern histories through the unique lens of photography and is on view at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, MA through July 31st, 2024.

Andrew Joseph Russell,  Slave Pen, Alexandria, Virginia 1863, albumen silver print, High Museum of Art, purchased with funds Lucinda Weill Bunnen Fund and the Donald and Marilyn Keogh Family. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Organized chronologically by curators Gregory John Harris and Sarah Kennel for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, A Long Arc is an expansive and ambitious exhibition. Wet plate collodion and albumen prints from mid- to late-19th century practitioners such as Julian Vanerson, Andrew Joseph Russell and Timothy H. O’Sullivan open the show with several intimately scaled portraits. A vitrine with unique Daguerreotypes, including a particularly dazzling one by an anonymous photographer of Zachariah Weill mounted on his steed in Monroe, Louisiana, is a classic primer in early photographic technique.

Unidentified Photographer, Zachariah Weill, Monroe, Louisiana, 1853, Daguerrotype, collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Beneath the veneer of a gracious world found in these carefully crafted early pictures lies the tensions that were building up to the Civil War. Russell’s photograph of a nondescript building in Alexandria, Virginia with a sign unabashedly advertising “dealers in slaves” reveals what Hanna Arendt would later describe as “the banality of evil.” Photographers of the era distributed such pictures as cartes-de-visites which found their way to the northern states, fanning abolitionist sentiments. Enslaving people must end.

John Reekie, A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Virginia, 1865, published 1866, albumen silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Lucinda Weil Bunnen Fund and the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family, and the Addison Gallery of American Art.

Often considered the first drafts of history, newspapers and photographs create extraordinary personal records of larger events, and the aftermath of battles during the Civil War were some of the first images made of the carnage. The post-Civil War period was marked by racial tension, a backlash to the end of slavery. Yet A Long Arc eschews images of overt racist acts such as lynchings or images of the Ku Klux Klan, an egregious oversight, instead focusing on economic imbalances.

John Horgan, Jr., James Richardson’s Plantation, Jackson, MS, 1892, albumen silver print, High Museum of Art. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

James Van Der Zee, Whittier Preparatory School, Phoebus, VA, 1907, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA © The Van Der Zee Archive, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Crushing poverty persisted among those still working in the plantation system, as shown in John Horgan, Jr.’s 1897 photograph of cotton workers under a blistering sun. But dignity can be found in James Van den Zee’s luminous classroom picture from 1907 and in Prentice Herman Polk’s “The Boss,’” an imposing 1932 portrait from the Tuskegee Institute.

Prentice Herman Polk, The Boss, ca. 1932, gelatin silver print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, Kathleen Boone Samuels Memorial Fund (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Photography flourished as a medium by the 1930’s and the documentary practice was cemented with the Farm Security Administration’s pursuit of describing poverty in the rural south with photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee. German-born American photographer John Gutzman explored American sub-cultures for European audiences, and his picture “The Game” made in New Orleans in 1937 is remarkably modern.

John Gutzman, The Game, 1937, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Walker Evans, Atlanta, Georgia,  1936, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the Hight Museum of Art Atlanta, purchased with funds from the Atlanta Foundation and the Addison Gallery of American Art. © The Estate of the Artist.

Peter Sekaer, Irish Channel, Future Site of St. Thomas Housing Project, New Orleans, ca. 1938, gelatin silver print, Addison Gallery of American Art, museum purchase. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

It is interesting to compare photographs by Walker Evans and his assistant Peter Sekelear, whose pictures reflect similar interests with different eyes. Both photographers turned their attention to the vernacular, bringing a sense of place into focus. Many of the photographers exhibiting in A Long Arc were neither southern nor poor. This calls into question the contribution that 1930’s depictions of southern poverty had on stereotyping, imploring viewers to feel sorry for the destitute rather than questioning the systems that kept their communities impoverished.

Bob Adelman, Kelly Ingram Park, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Dr. Henrie M. Treadwell and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA. © Estate of the Artist

Charles Moore, Martin Luther King Jr. Arrested, Montgomery, Alabama, 1958, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA, © Estate of the Artist.

Following the Civil War, it took one hundred years to pass civil rights legislation. The exhibit features remarkable photographs of the violent protests and counter-protests regarding systemic racism, such as Bob Adelman’s pummeling of protestors with fire hoses in Kelly Ingram Park, Charles Moore’s brutal arrest of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Hudson’s shocking image of police dogs attacking a high school student. Matt Heron’s “March from Selma” is timeless, hopeful, and unfortunately, still reverberates as an indictment of inequality in light of the current Black Lives Matter movement.

Robert Frank, Photo Booth, Tennessee, 1955, gelatin silver print, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA Seil Family Collection. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Leonard Freed, Wedding Party, South Carolina, 1963, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA, museum purchase. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

In the 20th century, photographers introduced a layer of artfulness to the historic narrative. Weaved throughout the exhibit are examples of more ordinary moments that express the distinctive cultural texture of southern daily life, such as Robert Frank’s “Photo Booth” (1955), Leonard Freed’s “Wedding Party” (1963), and Diane Arbus’ “Three Boys on a Porch.”

Clarence John Laughlin, The Masks Grow to Us, 1947, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Robert Yellowlees, and the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA. © Estate of the Artist.

A strong southern penchant for the surreal can be observed in images like those by Clarence John Laughlin, Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Emmet Gowin. Laughlin photographed a decaying antebellum structure alongside Edward Weston in 1941. His soft focus and presence of a ghostly figure in a window create a mysterious mood in contrast to the sharp reality of Weston’s image. And his use of a mask and slight camera shake in “The Masks Grow to Us” transforms a beautiful face into an hypnagogic visage.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1963, printed ca. 1963, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift in honor of Edward Anthony Hill. © Estate of the Artist.

Emmet Gowin, Family, Danville, 1970, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the H.B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust. (Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy)

Twenty years later, Meatyard photographed his sons in similarly abandoned structures and fields in the countryside surrounding Louisville, Kentucky. Also known for employing masks, Meatyard creates a dreamlike reverence for vanishing rural life in some of the best quality prints of his that we have ever seen. Emmet Gowin’s balmy composition of his multi-generational family splayed around their backyard with two watermelons is, like so many images of the south, both prosaic and magical.

Sally Mann, Deep South, Untitled (Scarred Tree), 1999, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Jane and Clay Jackson, 2019.221. © Sally Mann

Even in today’s “New South,” photography is largely a story of dichotomies: turbulent versus languorous, urban versus rural, privileged versus impoverished, and still, white versus Black. What appears to separate current photographic practice from other eras is that image-makers today seem compelled to address such dual realities with a critical, often indicting interrogation of the south’s legacies. Sally Mann’s “Deep South, Untitled (Scarred Tree)” evokes the brutality of the south’s violent history in the scar on her romantically crafted print of an oak tree.

Dawoud Bey, The Birmingham Project: Wallace Simmons and Eric Allums, 2012, Pigmented inkjet print, Collection of Andrew Z. Scharf, © Dawoud Bey

Dawoud Bey’s “The Birmingham Project: Wallace Simmons and Eric Allums” pairs a portrait of a boy the same age as one of the victims of the infamous bombing of Birmingham, Alabama’s 16^th Street Baptist Church in 1963, alongside a portrait of a man at the same age as that victim would be now, had they lived. The earnest presence of Bey’s subjects in a church pew infuses his duets with rattling resonance in a testimony to the ongoing struggle for civil rights. Images like Mann’s and Bey’s show how contemporary southern photography’s introspection permeates portrait, documentary, and landscape imagery.

William Eggleston, Halloween, Outskirts of Morton, Mississippi, 1971, Dye transfer print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection, ©William Eggleston

Baldwin Lee, DeFuniak Springs, Florida, 1984, Gelatin silver print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Endowment, © Baldwin Lee (Installation view by Elin Spring)

A Long Arc brings together contemporary images by pillars of southern photography alongside newcomers and non-natives in an engrossing synergy: William Eggleston’s emotionally charged color palette and Baldwin Lee’s unerring empathy set the stage for RaMell Ross’ stunning “plural gaze,” and Kris Graves’ vibrant, symbolic repudiation of the Confederacy.

RaMell Ross, iHome, 2013, pigmented inkjet print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Marilyn and Donald Keough Family Foundation, 2022.159. © RaMell Ross

Kris Graves, Lee Square. Richmond, Virginia, 2020, Pigmented inkjet print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the H.B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, © Kris Graves

Stacy Kranitz, Buchanan County, Virginia, 2011, Pigmented inkjet print, courtesy of the artist and Tracey Morgan Gallery © Stacey Kranitz (Installation view by Elin Spring, with apologies for reflections).

Some of the most questioning images seem mundane on their surface. Stacy Kranitz’s endless line of coal-filled rail cars cutting through a lush mountainside “poise between notions of right and wrong.” Wendy Ewald’s guileless portrait reflects a disturbingly nonchalant attitude toward guns while Joel Sternfeld’s bucolic photograph offers an unsettling social commentary on income and racial inequality.

Wendy Ewald, Charles and the Quilts, Kentucky, 1975-1982, Gelatin silver print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, collection of Ashley Kistler © Wendy Ewald (Installation view by Elin Spring)

Joel Sternfeld, Domestic workers waiting for the bus, Atlanta, Georgia, April, 1983, Dye coupler print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Dr. Judy and Kevin Wolman © Joel Sternfeld

Mitch Epstein’s lyrical photograph bathes a hurricane-ravaged yard in softly glowing light, it’s shock and awe underlining the mounting consequences of climate change. In her ominous B&W print, Debbie Fleming Caffery casts a bucolic landscape against a roiling atmosphere that echoes the volatility of southern life. Walking through the exhibit, it is notable how much larger the modern photographs tend to be compared with those made prior to 1970. Not only does their size enhance impact, but their larger scale often incorporates details that add to our understanding of current conditions.

Mitch Epstein, Biloxi, MS, 2005, Dye coupler print, The Warehouse, Atlanta © Mitch Epstein

Debbie Fleming Caffery, Stormy Sky, 2016, Gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art. Atlanta, commissioned with funds from the H.B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust and the Picturing the South Fund for the Picturing the South series © Debbie Fleming Caffery (Installation view by Elin Spring).

Any exhibition as sweeping and striving as A Long Arc is fundamentally impossible. There are a million ways to do it, and undoubtedly, the selection would look quite different if the past and current curators of Atlanta’s High Museum had been racially diverse. Nonetheless, this sterling amalgamation of historic and contemporary southern photography finds a genuine pulse of the people, places, palettes, and emotional currents that coexist in this storied region of myths and contradictions.

For more information about this exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://addison.andover.edu/exhibition/a-long-arc-photography-and-the-american-south-since-1845/

For information or purchase of the excellent exhibition catalog, go to: https://aperture.org/books/a-long-arc-photography-and-the-american-south/

Also on view at the Addison Gallery of American Art: Robert Frank and Todd Webb: Across America 1955, look for our review next week!

(Feature Image) Matt Heron, The March from Selma,  1965, gelatin silver print, courtesy of the High Museum (Gift of Gloria and Paul Sternberg) and the Addison Gallery of American Art © The Estate of the Artist