Roger May 1/26/20 Roger May 1/26/20

Review - Mike Smith's Warning Shots

“Is this still a red and blue world? I see it as dark as night. Not that it is obscure; rather, it’s opaque.” Eudora Welty, On Writing, 1949.

Warning Shots by Mike Smith is not an easy book of pleasing pictures from the quaint, rural South. This is not a book filled with hope of a brighter future, at least not at first glance. It is dark as night.

It’s in this darkness of shadow that we see the first person emerge after a dozen photographs into the book. It’s Smith’s shadow cast onto the first few steps of a home whose lawn is decorated by black lawn-jockeys.

For four decades, Mike Smith has photographed east Tennessee and the surrounding region with the kind of obsession one has that can only be described as love. I don’t mean a first love, or new love, or romantic love. I mean the kind of love that finds its way from your bones to your head and back to your heart. Welty also writes about the notion that you can write (or photograph) from love with straight fury. I sense fury throughout this body of work.

In Diana C. Stoll’s introductory essay, “Shooting in the Dark,” she writes, “These are not quiet or inscrutable metaphors - and maybe that is the point. In these benighted times, guesswork no longer has a place; so Smith lays it all out for us, clear as day.” Stoll couldn’t be more spot on. This book is anything but quiet.

Mike Smith began teaching photography at East Tennessee State University in 1981 and taught there until he retired in 2018. That, in and of itself, is an incredible accomplishment as it seems rare that one works in the same job or with the same company for an entire career. His work there greatly influenced generations of photographers, many of whom would point to Smith as the reason they studied photography and continue to practice.

This work was assembled during the 2016 election cycle. Given the dates the pictures were made, they suggest this climate isn’t as new as we might think, or better yet, think we’ve somehow outgrown. Too often, we don’t think about pictures because we aren’t required to. We are inundated with loaded images. We are spoon-fed pictures. We are lulled into a sugar coma by the ease of pictures that require little of us. This is not that.

Spending time with this book, with these pictures, makes me uncomfortable. I’m glad for it. If it doesn’t make the viewer uncomfortable, doesn’t evoke some visceral response, some reflexive withdrawal, there is something seriously wrong with the viewer. There is no safety, no safety net in these photographs.

The first chains placed on a slave brought from Africa, the first Native American pushed off the land, the first chunk of coal extracted, the first tree felled, this is our evidence and yet we are surprised by it and want nothing more than to look away or suggest something is “wrong” with “those people.” This is our inheritance.

These pictures, while made in Appalachia, represent a far wider reach than rural east Tennessee. In the closing essay, “Troubling Images,” Eric Paddock writes, “As Smith’s photographs penetrate to these sad, alienated and frightening layers of the region’s landscape, we know they lie below the surface in other parts of the country, too."

Images like this convince us we can know a place, point to it, but allow us to miss, perhaps withdraw from the much heavier, more painful work of looking inward, or asking of ourselves what part do we play in this?

*Editorial note: I received a complimentary review copy of Warning Shots from Kehrer Verlag.

Preview Warning Shots here.

Roger May 11/6/19 Roger May 11/6/19

Review - Sheron Rupp's Taken From Memory

It usually doesn’t take me six months to share my thoughts about a photobook, but nevertheless here we are. When I saw the first spreads of Sheron Rupp’s book earlier this year, I reached out to Kehrer Verlag’s public relations folks and asked for a review copy. The book arrived in early June and I knew before I reached the end it would be one of my favorite photobooks, and one of the most beautifully designed and printed books I’ve seen. That part didn’t take six months.

In July, my daughter was to give birth to her first child a few states away, so I stacked Rupp’s book in a neat pile of other work I planned to get to and prepared to become a grandfather. I looked at the book often, familiarizing myself with its pictures, the organization of the work, and the feelings – all the feelings – the book generated for me.

My granddaughter, Waylon Jane, lived for 24 days. In early August, my family and I found ourselves grieving in ways we never thought possible. On the surface, I tried to maintain some sense of normalcy, but inside, spiritually, emotionally, creatively, I was coming apart at the seams. I carried Rupp’s book back and forth to work, thinking I’d write about it at some point, needing to write about it at some point. It moved from my backpack back to my desk and then to the bookcase by our front door. Every time I walked by it, I was reminded that I wasn’t ready to write about it yet. And a couple of days ago, I picked it up, looked through it again and decided it was time.

One of the great gifts that books like Taken From Memory gives us is the opportunity to connect to something so beautiful, so tangible, and to be able to hold in our hands moments of inexplicable wonder and refined curiosity. It has the familiarity of a family photo album without a snapshot aesthetic. So much attention to detail is given that it’s hard to imagine making a handful of pictures like these much less the 75 included in the book. It is in every sense of the word, astounding.

The book’s design is wonderful in its own right. Measuring 12” x 11”, it ranks as one of my favorite photobook dimensions; not unwieldy or unmanageable, but large enough to appreciate the meticulous compositions, colors, and shadows Rupp’s work offers. All the details seem to be dialed in just so, a testament to designer Anja Aronska of Kehrer Design. As an object, the book is quite remarkably made and presented.

Taken From Memory feels like a body of work that could’ve been made exclusively in Appalachia, yet only 18 photographs were made in what the Appalachian Regional Commission regards as Appalachia. In addition to Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, we see photographs from Vermont, Montana, Massachusetts, and several others states. So why does this feel so much like home to me when I’ve never even been to Montana? I’ve come to believe Taken From Memory holds the ability to transmit the feeling of intimacy and of seeing and being seen in a way that makes it more than just a photobook.

Every photograph contains, and ultimately reveals, something one could easily overlook at first glance, rewarding the viewer for looking a bit closer and staying a bit longer. As a photographer, I’ve often found that’s when the best pictures are made – when you stay a little longer and look a bit closer. As a viewer, I’m pleased to experience this in a book of photographs that offers no shortage of beautiful detail.

Rupp’s work implies a connection with the folks being photographed that I find rare in much of the work I see. Growing up, it was common to hear the phrase “never met a stranger” when someone was describing my grandfather, who could seemingly talk to just about anyone at any time just about anywhere. Rupp’s work suggest to me that she’s never met a stranger or at the very least, someone who stayed a stranger for very long. Perhaps that’s another facet of her work that makes Taken From Memory seem so much like home.

John Szarkowski (1925-2007), who served as the Museum of Modern Art’s director of the Department of Photography for nearly 30 years, said of one of Rupp’s pictures in 2006, “There’s a woman in the [Getty] show who I think is really good. [Looking through catalog.] Sheron Rupp. Don’t ask me why that’s such a good picture, it’s just a perfect picture.” (See below.) He continues, “The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It’s not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You’re not supposed to look at the thing, you’re supposed to look through it. It’s a window. And everything behind it has got to be organized as a space full of stuff, even if it’s only air.”

St. Albans, Vermont, 1991. © Sheron Rupp. “Don’t ask me why that’s such a good picture, it’s just a perfect picture.” John Szarkowski.

There is a perfect picture for me in this book. In it, a small girl leans against a wood fence. Her gaze is toward the hill across the way, beyond the Rose of Sharon bush much bigger than she is. Her hair is caught by a breeze coming through, which I imagine carries with it the fragrance of the Rose of Sharon I remember so well from my grandmother’s front yard. Maybe she’s playing hide and go seek and she’s counting. Maybe she sees something on the hill. I close my eyes and imagine Waylon Jane and the backyard lightning bugs of summer I’ll never see her chase and catch and let go again. I imagine her voice and her hair and her laugh in the hills she never got to see. And in my mind, it is a perfect picture, familiar and home.

*Editorial note: I received a complimentary review copy of Taken From Memory from Kehrer Verlag.