A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845

Isaac H. Bonsall was one of many enterprising photographers who took advantage of the public’s rising interest in photography, especially studio portraits, during the onset of the Civil War. These photographs allowed sitters to strengthen bonds with their loved ones, reinvent themselves, and construct personal histories. In 1862, the New-York Tribune published an observer’s account of the onslaught of traveling portrait studios among the army: “A camp is hardly pitched before one of the omnipresent artists in collodion and amber [. . .] pitches his canvas gallery and unpacks his chemicals.” For these armies, photography became a tether to both reality and fantasy.

Isaac H. Bonsall (American, 1833–1909), Bonsil’s Photo Gallery, Chattanooga, TN, 1865, albumen silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Lucinda Weil Bunnen Fund and the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family, 2021.269.

In the years following the Civil War, numerous schools were founded throughout the South to educate the emancipated Black population. Literacy, which plantation overseers strictly forbade, became a beacon of hope and accomplishment for Black Americans. The dedication to education was so strong among freed peoples that the literacy gap between White and Black communities in the South closed within a generation. The Whittier School, photographed by Harlem portraitist James Van Der Zee, was distinguished among its peer institutions for its expanded curriculum, including classes up to ninth grade that encompassed art and music education and dedicated science facilities. 

James Van Der Zee (American, 1886–1983), Whittier Preparatory School, Phoebus, Va., 1907, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase, 74.143 B.

Though known as a Southern Gothic writer, Eudora Welty was also an accomplished photographer. After college, she returned to her home state of Mississippi and was hired as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration, documenting through writing and photography the effects of the Great Depression. What began as clerical documentation turned into a rich photography practice that she pursued until 1950. She writes, “In both cases, writing and photography, you were trying to portray what you saw, and truthfully. Portray life, living people, as you saw them. And a camera could catch that fleeting moment, which is what a short story, in all its depth, tries to do.”

Eudora Welty (American, 1909–2001), Courthouse Town, Grenada, 1935, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of McKinsey & Company, 2020.35.

An optician from Lexington, Kentucky, Ralph Eugene Meatyard worked at the edges of photographic practice, geographically and conceptually outside the mainstream of modernism. Though he considered himself a “dedicated amateur,” he became widely known for his staged scenes that disrupt the everyday by suggesting an absurd fantasy set in banal suburban environs. These scenes, which often feature props such as rubber masks and his family as actors, were informed by his Southern Gothic literary interests and drew on his imagination in search of inner truths amid the ordinary. In this photograph of his son Christopher surrounded by masks in a bucolic field, Meatyard considers youthful innocence while reckoning with mortality.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard (American, 1925–1972), Untitled, 1963, gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift in honor of Edward Anthony Hill, 2018.69.

In the tradition of Robert Frank’s book The Americans, Joel Sternfeld embarked on a nationwide road trip for his American Prospects, which grappled with the state of the country during the Reagan era. Here, three Black women are the only signs of life in a Sandy Springs, Georgia, neighborhood. Driveways segment parcels of land within the seemingly endless subdivision, emphasizing the primary mode of transport for the affluent residents. By contrast, the women wait for public transportation to ferry them to and from their jobs maintaining their employers’ homes. Sternfeld’s critical stance lays bare the region’s income and racial inequalities, still present twenty years after the civil rights movement.

Joel Sternfeld (American, born 1944), 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, 2017.466.

José Ibarra Rizo’s series Somewhere In Between documents the Latine immigrant experience in the American South, an experience he shares and one that is marked by a sense of being pulled between two cultures. Rizo’s tender photographs focus on a community that is ubiquitous in the region yet often misrepresented in popular media and political debates. Limbeth and Karim, a portrait of a young couple embracing, emphasizes intimate care and personal connection, thereby countering narratives that malign migrants in the United States.

José Ibarra Rizo (American, born Mexico, 1992), Limbeth and Karim, 2021, pigmented inkjet print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Dr. Joe B. Massey, 2022.252.