Somewhere in the South A Photographic Exploration of Land, History, and Nostalgia by Bevin Valentine
It
will come as no
surprise to anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in the South that southerners are, generally, obsessed by nostalgia. Peeling paint, decrepit tobacco sheds, ancient Texaco signs—these signs all speak to a shared past, one we cling to in our collective memory, one that both haunts and unites us. It is to this nostalgia that Somewhere in the South, a photography exhibition presented by Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina, speaks. The show, which pairs contemporary southern photographers with photographic legends William Eggleston and William Christenberry, appeals to a desire for the continuation of tradition, for an extension of our shared history, and for a reassurance that we, as southerners, are still unique in this adherence to the past. It is the Eggleston—that photographer’s iconic “red room” photograph (actually untitled, Greenwod, Mississppi, 1973)— that is the centerpiece of this show. Though the red room picture eschews narrative, the photograph comes with its own mythology. In the BBC Imagine documentary series in 2009, Eggleston describes lying on a bed in a room in his friend’s Comdemned, Eliot Dudik, coutesty of Rebekah Jacob Gallery
page 29
Issue 2 / July, 2013