Following in the footsteps and traditions of Walker Evans, James
Agee, and William Faulkner, since the 1960s Christenberry (b. 1936)
has vividly documented the disappearing rural landscape of the
American South, particularly scenes from his youth in Hale County,
AL. This evocative catalogue to a Spanish exhibition of 300
photographs and a dozen sculptures aims to widen his exposure in
Europe. Christenberry's quietly evocative images capture and
recapture (he often photographs the same buildings and locales year
after year) the decline, deterioration, and transformation of
abandoned tenant-farmer houses and other buildings, country
churches and cemeteries, and dilapidated advertising signs.
Included in the show is The Klan Room (1962-97), an installation of
signage, photos, and artifacts that have haunted him since he
briefly attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting in 1960. Atypical urban
landscapes of Beale Street, Memphis, round out the exhibition.
Essays introduce and comment on his life, motifs, and documentary
style. Other noteworthy, recent additions to the photographer's
critical canon include William Christenberry, by A. Grundberg et
al., written to accompany the Smithsonian exhibition Passing Time
(2006); and the monographs William Christenberry: Working from
Memory: Collected Stories, compiled and edited by S. Lange (2008),
and Christenberry's Kodachromes (2010). Summing Up: Recommended.
Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.
*CHOICE*
Alabama pulses deep within the artistic DNA of the photographer
William Christenberry, born in Tuscaloosa in 1936. And these
photographs, most taken in Alabama in the 1960s and '70s, tell
takes of an older, vanished South from inside that South.
*The New York Times*
The 260-page volume is divided into 13 sections - each dedicated to
a recurring theme in Christenberry's works - and covers the range
of his career, from early black-and-white photos of interiors
clearly influenced by Christenberry's original hero, Evans, to the
buildings he returns to annually, including the Bar-B-Q Inn and his
grandparents' home in Alabama.
*WSJ Magazine*
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