Baldwin Lee on his rediscovered images of the deep south

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/11/it-stunned-me-that-people-had-to-live-like-this-baldwin-lee-rediscovered-images-deep-south-southern-portrait

by nkurz • 3 years ago

143 95 3 years ago

theguardian.com

macintux• 3 years ago

Often, on his arrival in a new town in Alabama or Mississippi, he would head straight to the police headquarters to ask for advice on which areas he should avoid for his own safety. Wherever the local sheriff warned him not to go, he went. Did he encounter any animosity on his lone travels? “The only hostility I experienced was from white people,” he replies. “I had a number of run-ins that were not pleasant – guns pulled on me, a rifle aimed at my face. There is a lot at stake there for some people when they suddenly see an outsider, especially an outsider with a camera.”

lampshades5• 3 years ago

White people in these areas don't trust people from outside these areas. The only reason other people come to them is to paint the people in a bad light in some way or scam them (why else would anyone come? it's certainly not for work or pleasure). It has nothing to do with there being "a lot at stake," they just genuinely don't like outsiders.

source: from these areas.

edit: removed the "white" from people

mimirs• 3 years ago

The photographer in this case, Baldwin Lee, was Chinese-American and grew up in Chinatown in New York. So his experience was probably not due to this phenomenon.

mc323• 3 years ago

It used to be, if you were a Yankee driving through Georgia on the way to Florida, a common corridor with NEasterners, they would often be advised to not detour off from the interstate, else risk get entangled in local "policework".

x86_64Ubuntu7• 3 years ago

Then why weren't black people pulling guns on him for "painting people in a bad light"? It's because in the South, the dominant white population has always hated any narrative that didn't show the chattel slave system or the Jim Crow system in a good, if not benign light. This links up with the history of the South and it constantly feeling that it's moral and social structure were always being under attack for being wrong.

AviationAtom5• 3 years ago

I think this discussion is a losing discussion, as history is recast as being strictly only one way. I could speak of the stories I heard on Thursday from a historian down here, but people would instantly discount it. It very much reflects our current times, where all is seen as either white or black, but nothing seen as a shade of gray. Polarization has benefitted no side, in any debate.

themitigating4• 3 years ago

Don't make excuses for people who just default to mistrust and hate towards people they don't know.

bandyaboot• 3 years ago

When you’re putting guns in peoples’ faces, they don’t need to paint you in a bad light. You’ve given them a photograph.

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

There is a social narrative that white poverty doesn't exist in the US even though it is the bulk of all poverty. I've been places exactly like those in the article but everyone is white. Someone making that explicitly visible exposes a truth that many don't want to have acknowledged.

elevaet2• 3 years ago

It's not just those areas. I had some months of "door-knocking" experience in Chicagoland, early noughties. The neighbourhoods tended to be racially segregated: Latino, white, or black. As a white person, we were often warned to avoid certain latino or black neighbourhoods by police and civilians, yet they were almost always more friendly and welcoming than white neighbourhoods, and never ended up being dangerous.

In the white neighbourhoods there was a tendency to be greeted with suspicion, aggression, loud guard dogs, threats, and occasionally with guns. I imagine that the difference would be more pronounced if I was black and walking around in those same neighbourhoods.

kerpotgh• 3 years ago

In my experience, Black and Latino people are very warm and welcoming on an individual level. It’s the about 5-10% of individuals in the community that wreak havoc, and the communities already know exactly who those people are.

nonethewiser4• 3 years ago

If you don’t consider getting a gun pointed at you “hostility” then you’re not a reliable judge.

bobbylarrybobby• 3 years ago

Is he not saying that it was the white people he encountered who pointed a gun at him?

joenot443• 3 years ago

Have you ever heard the term "carpetbagger" before?

Folks in the South have grown wary of outsiders because of the some hundred years of history of visitors coming to these states with one goal in mind: to profit. Every abandoned coal mine, every rundown pain clinic, they're all representative of the same system which exploits poor rural Southerners and then turns around to paint them as rednecks and racists. If other commenters haven't spent much time with folks in the South, I feel like they'll never really understand exactly just where that perceived distrust of newcomers come from.

throwayyy4790874• 3 years ago

This this this this this. This problem is getting _worse_ in the superstar cities due to immigration: the questions I've had people ask me about growing up in the South from born-wealthy Indians, Brits are absolutely insane.

People genuinely believe that Deliverance is a documentary, and that Now This' representations of the Deep South are 100% unbiased.

The South in many ways sucks and I'm happy to talk about that, but the things that New Yorkers/SF/Seattleites believe about the region has very little overlap with reality.

For example, there's a TON of Korean immigrants on the Georgia/Alabama line from Hyundai Kia plants who stay because it's so religious. People should talk about stories like that when discussing the oddities of the South, not JUST how awful Poor White Trash is.

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

Seeing his photo from 1973 makes me feel weird. He looks like any young guy on Instagram a few years ago. But he's this old dude now

xsmasher• 3 years ago

It'll happen to yooouuu!

Kidding, but is there a word for this kind of Sonder? When you realize that your grandparents used to be people? Or when you notice that the "grown-ups" are now you, and you have no idea what you're doing? And that they probably didn't either?

I get it when I realize "huh, this is the age my parents were when I was born," "this is the age they were when I went to college," etc. etc.

We were always somewhat insulated from it because pictures of young-old-folks were all black and white, but kids born today will see the tiktoks that their parents made. I wonder if that will shorten the emotional distance.

dctoedt2• 3 years ago

It'll happen to yooouuu!

As a teen I teased my dad for no longer being the rail-thin fighter pilot of his early photos. He laughed and said, you wait, kid — and sure enough ....

EDIT: Back then I was pretty "buff" from manual labor. Fast forward to maybe 20 years ago: My then-teenaged son saw a video (my late dad's home movies, digitized) of me, shirtless, during that era. Artlessly, my son blurted: Wow, Dad, what happened?

Fauntleroy• 3 years ago

Just dropping in here to add that Baldwin Lee was an excellent photography professor, and is one of the big reasons I kept on doing photography as a semi-pro hobby long after college. A bright, kind, and enthusiastic man in everything he pursued. Wild seeing his name randomly come up here!

throwanem2• 3 years ago

I'm glad it did!

I know plenty about what white poverty in Mississippi looked like in those years, on account of growing up in it. Of black poverty I know next to nothing, because it was Mississippi, after all, and one wasn't encouraged.

I hate that I need someone from nowhere nearby to show it to me, and at this late date besides - but I'm glad he was there to do it, and that he collected his work into the book a copy of which is on its way to me now.

ZenThereWere0• 3 years ago

The photographs in this article resonate with me. As a young child in the late 1980s, I would ride along with my father on visits to various rural Black communities located in one of the states covered by Mr. Lee. One gentleman in particular stands out in my recollection. Aged nearly 90 back then, one of his grandfathers had been a slave and the other a White man. His son was a sheriff's deputy, and they both kept cows that still ranged free, even though stock laws had stopped the practice there in the late 1970s. Also, his wife was named after my great-grandmother. It was Faulknerian.

irthomasthomas• 3 years ago

Someone posted a street view link to a neighbourhood in Alabama, but it looks like they deleted their comment? Anyway, I came back to say that that one is going in to my No Place To Shit street-view project! https://i.imgur.com/IhjKX9r.jpg

throwaway14922• 3 years ago

I’m sincere when I type this so I hope someone can help me understand. This type of “art” seems exploitative to me. Certainly many viewers are shocked by the poverty on display in the richest nation on earth. And that’s valid and understandable, and.. obvious? It feels like the people and their condition are cheapened and objectified by the pictures.

pigsty• 3 years ago

I grew up in a town very similar to this in the 90s.

It’s nostalgic for me. Showing the conditions people live in isn’t necessarily exploiting them. Some of these people look very happy—take joy in their joy being captured and seen by hundreds of thousands of people decades later.

ggm• 3 years ago

Since the victorian era, photography has been used as part of welfare campaigning. It was heavily used to document the condition of the working classes in the UK, as part of the victorian attempt to alleviate systemic poverty. Photographs of the east end of london, Slums in britain at large, Slums of Glasgow, the tenaments. It continued throughout the 20th century. I am sure there were US equivalents documenting the condition of housing in Chicago, New York and surrounds.

It was used during the depression as part of the WPA activity to document the conditions of migrant workers and displaced people in the dustbowl.

It has been used consistently by primarily left wing parties to document social conditions as part of their campaigns for political change.

"art" is a label. So is "agitprop". -If it was shot as "agitprop" but became "art" or it was shot as "art" and became "agitprop" does it really alter anything here?

Diane Arbus was I think looking for the extreme in the social condition and individuals as "types".

mc323• 3 years ago

For the UK (England, specifically), Chris Killip (specially In Flagrante):

https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/chris_killip/

https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-cultu...

akiselev• 3 years ago

I am sure there were US equivalents documenting the condition of housing in Chicago, New York and surrounds.

A famous example is photography of the Five Points slums in New York [1] that led to significant changes in the city.

[1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/jacob-riis-photographs-how-t...

mc323• 3 years ago

They do straddle a line. It's the same line that ruin porn photographers face (though I think they have fewer scruples). Sometimes they are exploitative, but they are also being documentative (for example, the Dustbowl internal migrants captured by Lange, among others).

If you go to Today's Russia or Ukraine, you will find very similar conditions, often captured by wealthier European photographers. Are they being exploitative, are they documenting. It depends on the photographer and how they approach it. You can still grant the subject respect and decency.

AviationAtom5• 3 years ago

I think many people would be surprised by how many people lived this way into the late 90s.

Even now, venture to mountainous regions of West Virginia and you can still find households without electricity or running water.

I think in this modern times people assume all such folks want those amenities, but are too poor to afford them, when really some of them couldn't be any happier to live as they do.

gkanai• 3 years ago

seems exploitative to me

It would have been had the photographer made a lot of money off of the images, for instance.

He didn't. He was an art professor for most of his life- certainly did not significantly profit off of his art.

He interacted with the subjects and sent prints to them after the fact.

Would it be better if shocking poverty is not photographed?

duxup• 3 years ago

The images in the article I think shows character, people surviving in difficult situations. There is humanity in every photo.

Maybe they wanted to be remembered? For people to see the truth of who they are, where they are?

nl2• 3 years ago

I see these pics and I don't see poverty - I see beauty, pride and happiness.

Look at the guy lounging with his back to the car or the guy with his back to the tree in [1]. Can you imagine trying to tell them they are being exploited?

Or that the photo of the girl in [2] isn't a stunningly beautiful image?

And once needs to be careful considering poverty and the date these pics were taken. These people look well dressed, and the couple kissing clearly have jobs (see the hard hat hanging up). I had cousins who grew up in the 1980 in conditions that weren't massively different to this and we never considered them poor at all.

Or consider this: Are the pics in [3] of 1980's SF more of less exploitative?

[1] https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bee576fea518043e1164ded4f42ca...

[2] https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/802853306d66c60d2e1dedb8ec2e2...

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/30/public-matters...

svachalek• 3 years ago

I'm with you. I look at these pictures, and it's kind of intriguing to find the hints of the degree of poverty in there. The people in them dominate the pictures, and they seem well dressed, comfortable, healthy.

The faces are fascinating, there are entire stories in the faces.

IOT_Apprentice• 3 years ago

I'd imagine people who throw around "woke" and being anti-"CRT" are the type who want nothing to do with photography of this type. Documenting what IS, is not exploitative, it simply is showing a snapshot of life in a particular place.

Why put the word art in quotes? We actually have one of our two political parties trumpeting about being anti-woke, and billionaires decrying "woke" as an evil mind virus to their legion of devoted followers.

Woke candy, woke railroads, woke banks.

Billionaires will be billionaires. Ordinary people will take photographs of people living their lives, exploitation may arise, if the purpose is to demean the subject and denigrate their life, their culture or circumstances. It appears as though that did not happen in this case.

nonethewiser4• 3 years ago

Documenting what IS, is not exploitative, it simply is showing a snapshot of life in a particular place.

Surely you can grant that some things that exist are exploitative. Your reasoning here amounts to exploitation not existing. Documenting something that exist (which is just documenting) can be exploitative.

throwayyy4790874• 3 years ago

A lot of wokeism is prefaced on a caricature of conservatives, and a denial that there's any possible valid ideologies driving these issues other than White Supremacy.

For the record, White Supremacy ideologies ARE how they got to the state put in the photos - but that doesn't mean that the people currently in charge are all neonazis. We don't apply that logic to NY state government w/r/t NYCHA or Newburgh or Far Rockaway, and we should extend that courtesy to people like Nikki Haley.

throwaway14922• 3 years ago

I hope you understand that not everyone shares your pre-occupation with the current era of culture wars that you show here. To one not in your "space" this comment reads very odd indeed; as in attributing malice where this is, implying things that aren't reasonably implied, manufacturing conflict?

hattmall2• 3 years ago

It's odd to think this is exclusive to the south. He could have just went and photographed the NYC projects. It's also not exclusive to that time period, which wasn't long ago, there are still neighborhoods that look just as rough or worse, largely black, in the US right now.

wahnfrieden• 3 years ago

he grew up in/around nyc projects

woodruffw2• 3 years ago

There is shocking poverty across the US, including in our cities. But no, NYC's projects and the south's poverty were not comparable in either breadth or depth, and still aren't[1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/health/plumbing-united-st...

nonethewiser4• 3 years ago

Very poor for sure. But she owns land. Compare that to people living in cells in the projects.

rayiner5• 3 years ago

It’s not exclusive to the Deep South. It’s also in Appalachia and oddly enough in the Dakotas: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/dec/01/jim-webb/j...

My dad, who grew up in a village in Bangladesh, visited West Virginia many years ago and was shocked by what he saw. It genuinely had never occurred to him that there were Americans without indoor plumbing.

hattmall2• 3 years ago

I really wonder how a site like that "fact check" can get things so wrong. Like I just took most of the stats at face value until I see something I'm familiar with. In this example Hancock County Ga is about 70% black, not white as they state. As well, and I don't fault them for not knowing it, but it's truly about 95% black. The north end of the county is vacation homes that people will claim as a primary residence for tax purposes but practically no one lives there. It's over an hour on dirt roads to the nearest dollar general.

nonethewiser4• 3 years ago

Or the massive amount of trailer parks

nl2• 3 years ago

If you've just read the HN discussion here, please click through to the article. The photographs are spectacularly good.

This one in particular made me stop reading: https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/802853306d66c60d2e1dedb8ec2e2... (large size than what is in the the article).

elevaet2• 3 years ago

The photos sit so well, just so. Great aesthetic and approach

Eschewing the socially concerned ethos that often underpinned the visual documentation of race and poverty in America at that time, Lee’s calm, measured portraits speak of a deeper engagement with his subjects

You can really see that in the examples from the article. Such a neutral and consensual quality.

I hope he entrusts his massive body of work to a good collection. Artistic merit aside, they would be extremely valuable historical records.

disposition2• 3 years ago

Another write up / interview from last October, in the New Yorker [1].

Thanks for sharing OP

1. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/baldwin-lees-e...

2b3a51• 3 years ago

Mr (Dr?) Lee studied with Minor White and Walker Evans which as the OA points out is quite a contrast. The large format choice makes sense given the tradition those two mentors worked in (although I'm sure it was an independent choice). I think I'll try to get down to London to see this exhibition.

William Christenberry is a photographer/artist from the southern USA who photographs and makes models that explore his heritage. His work may be of interest to some here.

mbeex• 3 years ago

Something was triggered here, "American Pictures" by Jacob Holdt. I read the book in my late teens in East Germany. It was promoted there for ideological reasons, but the pictures were impressive and in some ways similar to those in the article.

Baldwin Lee on his rediscovered images of the deep south

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