A former student of Harry Callahan, John
McWilliams (b. 1941), had accepted a position to
teach in Atlanta at Georgia State University. Sev-
eral years earlier McWilliams happened upon
McClellanville, South Carolina, the site of one of
the places Robert Frank portrayed inThe Ameri-
cans. McWilliams’ fascination with the nearby
marshes, the Santee River, and the hidden beauties
of the Southern environment was mixed with his
awareness of the gradual abuse and destruction of
the same land. Man’s omnipresence creeps into
each of his moody, romantic views published in
Land of Deepest Shape(1989).
Another Nexus member, Lucinda Bunnen (b. 1930),
originally from New York, documented prominent
Georgians in a sociological manner in her bookMov-
ers and Shakers in Georgia(1978). Power and influence
fell under the scrutiny of her camera lens as she moved
through the same social circles. With Virginia Warren
Smith (1945–1999), from Atlanta, the two collabo-
rated to produce a survey project of Sunbelt graves,
what people make or buy to place on graves. Covering
26,000 miles and 677 cemeteries while living out of a
van, Smith and Bunnen discovered the deep, often
quirky and eccentric private connections between the
living and the dead. Underlying the physicality of each
grave was the subtext of death and loss. Their photo-
graphs, many hand painted, were published inScoring
in Heaven: Gravestones and Cemetery Art of the Amer-
ican Sunbelt States(1980).
In the 1980s there was a burst of artistic energy
coming from within the South, separate from any
other contemporaneous artistic pulse outside the
region. Native-born artists working in the South
found greater appreciation of the authenticity of
the Southern indigenous experience, both urban
and rural. Known as ‘‘The Picture Man,’’ Oraien
Catledge began photographing the forgotten peo-
ple in Cabbagetown, an area around a once suc-
cessful, later abandoned flourmill in Atlanta. It was
there also where Ray Herbert (‘‘Panorama Ray’’)
created his numerous, scrapbook-like panoramic
views of the community activities.
Birney Imes (b. 1951) photographed the Missis-
sippi Delta region where he was born and lived.
Called a folklorist, Imes conveyed the Delta’s rapidly
vanishing way of life in several quite different books:
Partial to Home (1990),Juke Joints (1990), and
Whispering Pines(1994). Tightly framed images in
Partial to Hometell about the people in the rural
black communities. The photographs of the bright
exotic colors, hand-printed signs and battered furni-
ture of the interiors of Juke Joints are without
drama, allowing the viewer to have a sense of
place. In a compelling, revealing manner,Whispering
Pinesexpresses the life of the late Blume Triplett, a
restaurant proprietor during the years the South
moved from segregation to integration.
Roaming the back roads of his native East Texas,
Keith Carter (b. 1948) sees himself as a photogra-
pher working in equal parts of ‘‘storytelling, poetry
and spirituality.’’ Mojo music soundlessly perme-
ates his images as does the descriptive writing of
Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. His lush,
naturally lit photographs are meant to be figurative,
with scenes that seem as if extracted from one’s
memories. Beginning withFrom Uncertain to Blue
in 1988, his work has been widely published, includ-
ingKeith Carter Photographs: Twenty Five Years
in 1997.
After attending Rice University and the San
Francisco Art Institute, Debbie Fleming Caffery
(b. 1950) returned to New Iberia, Louisiana, to
continue her image making there. Recalling a
South of an earlier era, Debbie Fleming Caffery’s
images of the workers on her family’s sugarcane
plantation are moody and shadowy. The soft
focus style echoes with a nostalgic, romanticized
yearning for the past. The 20-year project was pub-
lished inCarry Me Home: Louisiana Sugar Country
Photographs(1990).
Influenced by Emmet Gowin’s aesthetic app-
roach and E. J. Bellocq’s sensitive portraiture treat-
ment, Sally Mann (b. 1951) also engaged her family
as the subject of her images, set against the dark,
ambiguous landscape of her home in Lexington,
Virginia. Her large format pictures were carefully
planned, with written notes and preliminary shots.
Each title reads like a short story title, inviting
narrative interpretation. The photographic, often
intimate, fragments of her children’s languid sum-
mer days in the misty, lush countryside became the
subject of heated debate about sexual imagery,
child pornography, and artistic expression. And
while Mann has frequently returned to the first
subject of her camera lens, the Southern landscape,
the published images, Immediate Family (1992),
Second Sight(1994), andStill Time(1994), of her
family continued to draw attention.
As the Southern art communities continued to
thrive, more photographers came to experience the
uniqueness of the Southern culture. In 1983 Harry
Callahan, retired from teaching at RISD, moved to
Atlanta, where his daughter and her family as well
as several of his former students resided. Callahan’s
position as an acknowledged master in photogra-
phy and his proximity to photographers working in
the South was encouraging to the legitimacy of
their art. Additionally, there was recognition of
the increasing contributions made by photogra-UNITED STATES: THE SOUTH, PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE