On Oct. 24, Raymond Smith’s iconic photographs of his 1974
summer journey through the American South will go on display here at the
Georgia Museum of Art. Smith is most certainly in the tradition of James Agee’s
“Let
Us Now Praise Famous Men,” with his honest portraits of southerners who
look us at head-on, retaining their inherent dignity, yet his corpus is
considerably more diverse than Agee’s.
Fotomat Girl, Louisville, Kentucky
While Agee focused on the families of three white Alabama
tenant farmers during the Great Depression, Smith’s subjects include both African
American and white people of all ages and professions, in locations ranging
from Boston, Massachusetts, to Orlando, Florida. In a way, Smith’s photographs
display the New South as it was immediately following the civil rights movement,
a world where blacks and whites now co-existed in the same spaces on a more
equal footing, but also a world in which more insidious forms of racial
divisions and inequalities remained.
Smith chose the title of this exhibition from words he saw
on a church marquee in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, that fateful summer. Smith
points out that they are particularly relevant as it took 40 years from the year
in which he took the photographs until their publication and exhibition. The
people of his photographs and the social conditions of the American South seem
clearer to him 40 years later, and he notes that the people themselves, if
still alive, will have a better understanding of themselves that comes through
years of experience and maturity.
Self-Portrait, Motel Room, Williamsburg, Virginia
“In Time We Shall Know Ourselves” will be on display through
Jan. 3, 2016. Visitors are encouraged to drop by and reflect on the themes of
knowing, memory and reflection present in Smith’s work. A book by the same
title, including both the photographs and scholarly essays, is available for
purchase in the Museum Shop. On Nov 19, Smith will give a presentation on his work from 5:30-6:30 pm here at the Museum.
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