American South - Susan Meiselas

Porches

Lando

American South

In the Porch Portraits (1974) series, Meiselas explored an area in South Carolina where she taught photography in an elementary school. Stepping across the invisible boundary between the road and the private properties, she took portraits of the people in front of their small wooden houses with open verandas.

Following this experience, she developed a community-based project in Lando, an old company"‘owned mill town, to portray its multi-generational life through a “visual genealogy” of families living there. This project, the first in which Meiselas compiled an archive with the participation of a community, includes images from family albums and portraits of the inhabitants.

- Kristen Lubben
Susan Meiselas: In History, 2008

North Carolina, 1974

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.

Corine McClary, Kingstree, South Carolina, 1974

South Carolina, 1974

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.

Ben Gibbs, South Carolina, 1974

South Carolina, 1974

Mississippi, 1974

I would see someone cooking with a big pot in the middle of their yard, or carrying sticks along the road, or I would see kids sitting on a porch. I had no idea what I’d say to them.

Mary Childress. South Carolina, 1974

South Carolina, 1974

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.

Kids and house. Salters, South Carolina, 1974

Mississippi, 1974

Twins. Vossburg, Mississippi, 1974

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.

Contact Sheet, 1974

Myra Tate, age 13, Greeneville, South Carolina, 1974

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.

- Susan Meiselas, May 2018

Chunky. Mississippi, 1974

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Lando

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.

I would see someone cooking with a big pot in the middle of their yard, or carrying sticks along the road, or I would see kids sitting on a porch. I had no idea what I’d say to them.

American South - Mary Childress. South Carolina, 1974

American South - Kids and house. Salters, South Carolina, 1974

American South - Twins. Vossburg, Mississippi, 1974

American South - Myra Tate, age 13, Greeneville, South Carolina, 1974

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.

- Susan Meiselas, May 2018