Wilted Country : Part 2

These are images taken from the photo essay WILTED COUNTRY By Roger Eberhard

This is a Fabulous Book : Wilted Country

I was told to say that this is a fabulous book while in a back -room in Paris drinking champagne and laughing myself silly over the word fabulous,which is to me a thick furry word

Anyway it is near the multi-holiday season which I call Christmas and I love it because it is gift time.What better gifts than books and this one is can be wrapped easily.

I was told to say this is a fabulous book much to my dismay it is not, fabulous, it is better than that . From the poetic common sense introduction by Anthony Bannon head of George Eastman House to the sixty pictures by Roger Eberhard, and the three road stories by Benedict Wells

you get an astute observation of a part of the United States that the coasts sometime forget.That part where the pioneers settled and, the part most of us drive through thinking are we there yet.Where the endless sky and endless land captured in Roger's photographs in a harsh yet soften sunlight evoke memories with a slight droning sound.A place where things and color fades ; where people move on.These are pictures that show the human condition of going to the extreme to find a life even if it has to be abandon to stay alive.These empty buildings, fields and front yards observe over a summer driving on flat tops leaves you feeling a little sad.I have heard some talk saying that they are an indictment about the wastefulness of America.

Not to say we are not wasteful,but I think these pictures are about people all people who have a dream and then realize they have to move on I see these images as a sign of hope of what may be down the road.These photographs make statements about trying, a lush epic about a great country.We do not see the heroes,the pioneers struggling farmers,dreamers the ones who were there before just the bleached bones that stay resisting the pull of nature to finish and be done

We do not see people, we know that a few of them are still there waiting in the few shadows. I think these are successful photographs because I can put myself in this place,I am standing with hand raised above eyes shielding them to see beyond the bright blue white burnout. I can see me trying to peer into the vast space looking for someone to say hi... I could be the person glancing through a window as a stranger goes by.

Mr Eberhard makes elegant and thoughtful images and gives them life with little subtleties that require more than one visit one pass through.He has photograph what we southerners call place and told us stories without words .I do not think this book can be called fabulous,the photographs and concept are too good for that.

Wilted Country is a small run 1500 copies edited by Walter Keller available at Borders Books where they gift wrap.

JB3

The Element : Water

I am sorry that I have not posted lately.I guess part of the reason beside being a little lazy is the awe I felt once there was a blog with my name attached.I was with a close friend recently and they over heard a conversation that included a past secret in my life,which I never mentioned.That is one of my fears about this blog , how to control what is revealed about me in moments when passion,my passion says more about me than intended,

I grew up in a religious and ultra-conservative family on a little rural farm.Church was a big thing but I had within an innate feel for mysticism and spiritualism maybe I was delusional.

Water plays a great part in life it is the single largest component of our body we require it like we do air.Water cleanse and can symbolize rebirth and lord knows sometimes that rebirth just doesn't stick.I actually fear water... as I find it to be fascinating .So me being baptised in a lake is not happening.But I saw this image by Ms Jane Robbins Kerr and knew the moment.She was driving down a road in Mississippi and spotted this group of people. I have heard her story many times about rushing to get this photograph only to find a bunch of other cameramen trying to do the same.What this picture can not show, is the feeling of the boy is it relief at being given a new life or maybe just wanting to get it over. What is also missing are the reaction of the crowd of believers standing on the bank.This is the sweet point,where I want to believe,what they are, that life could be this simple .

Element : Air

Air : Church fans, all those little churches sitting in the fields or the grand ones in the city had them . They were saviors from the stifling and hot air and message bringers from the local funeral home, dry cleaners or other respectable small community business . So basic a piece of card board a stick and 2 staples a fan for the everyman.On the front usually a portrayal of The Good Sheperd or Christ Knocking At The Door, Suffer Little Children which was always one of my favorites.I think I saw my first da Vinci Last Supper on the front of a fan. The late sixties and seventies came and then it was Martin Luther King or the ever popular Martin Bobby and John a new kind of Trinity.Funny thing I never saw a church fan in a Catholic church ,I never thought of it until now. The power of a fan and the ritual of using it in the south is as exotic as fan use in Asia or Spain or the 17th Century French Court.It is funny watching northerners use fans. Because they do not understand it is used for more than moving air.Seldom used as a flopping contrivance except when reviving a fainting sister.Fans can be exclamation point to let others know you are talking to a greater power.They can signal the end with a quick crisp thrust as if t say I've making a point. There should never be a flopping nor should there swooshing sounds, held close and dignified you are in church and where if there is a moment of desperation and you can not find a fan there is all ways the handy program. Of course we now have central air which is a lot less interesting to photograph . Jo Lynn Still has created an image that brings a flood of memories of hot summers sitting in a wooden room on wooden pews with the rainbow of stain glass light, listening to people moan and pray and sing my mind wandering after reading the message dying to escape out away into the air.The fan can be empowering but we all know who controls the air and he is not fanning

I Will Fly Away

Like a lot of people who grew up in the south, I never thought of leaving. It was home. The land in some ways was paradise for this child. It was magical it was strange it was innocent yes there was darkness but what childhood does not read like a fairytale or a quest.

The only places I visited before I was nineteen were in the south Mobile Alabama, and a number of other small towns in that state, Kentucky where a grandparent lived and New Orleans for one sad and life changing time.

How do you live in a small enclosed community and not just fade the answer of course is with books and magazines and that invention that made pictures move, movies and later television which I think my parents got our first one in 1953. There were three movie theaters for colored people in Birmingham then and when I go home I have to pass by to see if they are still there.One of them was convert to a church fitting in a way

What I love about books is that they are private and quiet. If you have the courage to withstand stares you could go to the library and check out any number of forbidden books filled with ideas and ways of life different than yours. Books share secrets when you are a child. Books with words that confirmed some of those silver and black images that flicker in the darkness. As a child I was a dreamer and books and photographs of a larger world was the fetish to began my dreams of other people,other places...something

On my last trip home I stopped in the little library in Smithfield that I had used as a child not to borrow a book but to check my email, to connect to the world that really is no longer so outside.

Two of these pictures were a from Southern Memories:Part One. The books stacked on the table was taken by Joanna Knox. The path through trees by Brenda Fayard. The third picture is by Jessica Hines for me they work together to tell a little story .I read and read, then I went out. I saw a road I saw beautiful things I flew away

JB3

On the subway to New Orleans

On a NewYork City subway, on the way to an election night party I was stricken with the idea that I had just started a blog which is like a nine to five in commitment needs and requirements plus you have write too. This idea came to me on a journey across town.

Which made me think about one of the hot words of the moment, journey being used to describe life .You wake up today it is part of the journey.I am rambling so let me return to my thoughts as I sat on the subway.Most of them were about memory , how it is important to us as away to define ourselves and as away to connect with others.Life is a bulletin board which we attach memories to.Life is a collage of serendipity and accident , a scrapbook of passion life is this hour.

This leads me to what I want to share with you,what I was thinking about on the trip, a story about a book set in the Crescent City set in someones heart. More will come so...

Stealing Magnolias A Picture Or Two At A Time

I am a southern with too many words and digressions

This leads me to what I want to share with you a story about a book.A dear friend of mine purchased a home in New Orleans that was schedule to close a few days after Hurricane Katrina.When I received the news that she was getting this home after many trips there and how much she love the Crescent City I had to send a little note to say I was happy for her .I started to look for a proper image and chose one by one of my former students Patrick Cicalo.He had taken a picture on Royal Street in that hour when the glitterings madness of Mardi Gras was taking a rest .A mass of beads were left covering the street,they looked like treasure thrown with decadent abandon they look like plastic beads from China .

Perfect,a happy sad magical image that reminded me of New Orleans a little rainy, maybe but it is quiet .I am having coffee or the dregs of champagne. It is an hour of reverie, that will be forgotten in the harsh sun,but will be recalled with this picture.

Rambling again, my friend decided to write a book about her home and the city she became a part of. I was there at the birth of this idea for a book and the creative journey (he he, remember yesterday ) which is always a marvel .A few years after sending the picture I got a call from Deb Shriver she wanted to know if I remember the artist and I did.Now(wow) what a surprise to see it in the book as a double page spread it always nice to see the connection of things.I will visit more of the book and show a number of the images until the end of the year.I want to say that it is always about humans, memory,touch,smell , connectivity the generosity of spirit and serendipity that makes things happen for artists for us all.

Stealing Magnolias is a oral and visual scrape book which reflect place that is more feeling than most. Histories,stories,tales ,songs and recipes have been repeated over and over until they found themselves collected here.Being part of a love song that doesn't define the city but extends our ideas and enjoyment of what New Orleans is and can be.To my mind's eye this man with the happiest feathers in the world could be the announcer of dawn it makes me want to shake my hips

You know I love music and dance

JB3