I would drive down a road, see a house, stop my car and hope that someone would
open their door. I hadn’t planned what I would say. I began by explaining that I
was teaching photography in the local elementary school, that I came from the
North, and would like to take their photo. I didn’t really know why. As my work
has evolved, it’s rarely been focused on portraits. Portraits usually aren’t an
expression of a sustained relationship. I often find them to be awkward and
tense encounters. Now, from a distance of more than 40 years, there are so many
more questions that I wish I had asked, but maybe didn’t feel that I
could.
These photographs come from a time when tenderness was still possible. We
could see each other, if only for a moment. Each exchange led me to make a
picture and when I returned home I sent every family a print in the form of
an enlarged postcard. That process was most important to me. They had
welcomed me to trespass. The postcard was simply a gesture to acknowledge
that crossing we shared. I wonder now how their lives have evolved. Looking
back at myself as a young white woman making this work leads me to rethink
my own connection to the history of the South, which I knew so little about
then.
Wow!!
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