The Old Mill at Graysville, Georgia

The ruins of Graysville Mill after it was burned, possibly by vandals.

Blog Note: In response to a comment I received about last Friday's post, I'm reposting this article from April, 2022.

When we moved from Miami to Chattanooga in 1970, our new home, while in Tennessee, was only a mile or so from the village of Graysville, Georgia. The old mill, just on the other side of Chickamauga Creek from the village soon became a favorite destination for our walking, biking, or picnic excursions.

The village was laid out in the 1840s by John Gray, the English-born contractor who built the Western and Atlantic Railroad and dug the tunnel at Tunnel Hill. He liked the Northwest Georgia area so much that he bought 4,000 acres on Chickamauga Creek. He dammed the creek and built a large, three-story mill which was burned during the Civil War but was rebuilt in 1869 and continued to operate into the 1950s.

In the early '70s the mill was still pretty much intact. I made some photos of the interior, which are, unfortunately, in storage, but I seem to remember three milling stations with millstones approximately eight feet in diameter. A very impressive operation.

 The mill burned again in the late '70s. Possibly the work of vandals, or, it could have been picnickers or campers who let their fire get out of control. The heavy plank floors and massive wooden beams would have burned like tinder. 

 

 The house built on the mill ruin uses the foundation and original stones.

After the passage of some years, the site was purchased and an unique, three-story house was built on the ruin, using the mill foundation and many of the original stones.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Bygone Days at Graysville Mill

 Gray's Mill, Graysville, Georgia, early 1970s.

 I think I may have shown this picture before, but I'm writing about it again because it reminds me of a difficult, yet wonderful time. 

Louise and I met and married in Florida and lived there for several years. However, I always wanted to move back to the Chattanooga area, where I had gone to college and grad school. In 1970 we made the move, buying a small house in East Brainerd. I had a difficult time finding a good job; in fact, I bounced around for two years before catching on with Continental Film Productions. That was the true beginning of my professional career as a photographer and writer.

We had no money, but we were an active young family and were always able to find something fun to do. Thanks especially to Louise, who had the gift of making almost anything seem fun. Most days, if the weather was decent we were out walking or riding our bikes around the neighborhood. One of our favorite places was the old mill at Graysville, about a mile from our house.

I'll always cherish our time as a young family. We had so little, yet, we were rich. To this day I'm envious when I see young families and wish I could go back and relive those years.

(The picture was made with a medium format twin-lens reflex Yashica or Rolleicord vb on Kodak Ektachrome film around 1972.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Breakfast at Susie’s (Repost)

  Breakfast at Susie's Sunset Cafe

 The name of Susie’s Café on the square in beautiful downtown LaFayette, Georgia was officially Susie’s Sunset Café. But I always thought it should have been named Susie’s Sunrise Café, because the early morning sun streamed in through the plate-glass front windows and illuminated everything all the way to the back wall.

Susie’s had booths down each side for those who preferred a feeling of relative privacy, but it also had a couple of long tables down the center where lawyers, businessmen, farmers, factory workers, and gas station attendants ate their breakfasts together and chewed the fat (no reflection on the bacon or sausage) in amiable equality. 

Susie's has been gone for several years now, replaced by a succession of businesses, and LaFayette is the poorer for its loss. Places like Susie's are the heart and soul of country towns. 

On a technical note, the photograph was made with an Olympus SPn rangefinder camera with a non-interchangeable 40mm lens on Fujichrome Sensia RD 100 film. I had noticed the potential for this picture sometime previously, but it took more than one attempt to get myself seated in the best position with the most interesting combination of people in place. No one noticed me as I made a few exposures with my small camera from a booth to one side.

(Photograph and text adapted from my limited-edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait.)

 If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Scanners and Scanning

Clearing Storm, Lookout Mountain

In my post on February 15th, I wrote that you can't get away from digital. If you shoot film, you can't post your photos online or publish them in a magazine or book without converting them to digital images. The process for doing this is called scanning. You can make prints of your film photographs if you have a darkroom or access to one, and show them to your friends or even have a show of your prints in a gallery, but if you want to reach a larger circle, they will have to be scanned.

The very finest scans are made with an instrument called a drum scanner. The photographs in my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era were made with a drum scanner. However the process is expensive and not available to most of us.  

I use two instruments to scan my film photographs. The first is a Minolta-DiMage 5400. It only scans 35mm slides and negatives, but makes very fine scans -- almost as good as a drum scanner. The second is an Epson Perfection 4990 Pro. It's a flatbed scanner, similar to the one on your printer, but better. I use it for transparencies and negatives larger than 35mm, and also for scanning prints.

A third way to digitize film images is to photograph them with a digital camera. A few years ago, friend (although we've never met in person) and fellow photo-blogger, Dennis Mook, bought a full-frame Nikon camera (he normally shoots with Fujis), a macro lens, a lightbox, and some other accessories for close-up work, and spent a summer digitizing his entire collection of film photos in this way. (Check out his blog at www.thewanderinglensman.com/.)

 I haven't done this yet, but have most of the equipment I need. I plan to get started once we're moved and settled in our new home. Scanning with the Minolta-DiMage or the Epson is slow work. The digital camera method will certainly be quicker, and, I hope, will give even better results.

A good scanned film photograph is never quite as sharp or clear as an original digital image, but in any size print you're likely to make, you'll never see the difference unless you examine it with a magnifying glass. The photo of the little barn at the foot of Lookout Mountain was made with a Canon EOS A2 camera and 80-200mm f2.8L lens on Fujichrome 100 film and was scanned on the Minolta-DiMage scanner. It has been printed 36 inches wide and looks great. 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Visits to Maine

Louise on the beach at Pine Point, Maine. Low tide.

Her parents took her there when she was a small child.

 

The response to my picture of the old, abandoned ships at Wiscasset, Maine was surprising and gratifying, and got me thinking about our trips to Maine over the years. We first went in 1982 on vacation. You can read a bit about it here.

Of course, I'm never really on vacation, so I carried two Leica M3s and a lot of Kodachrome film. I shot a lot, but didn't get many photos that I consider memorable. The picture of Louise remembering her childhood on the beach at Pine Point at low tide is one I like.

Lobster shack at York Harbor, Maine

We went back in 1984; again in our Starcraft pop-up Camper. This time I carried Olympus 35mm equipment and my 4x5 view camera. I didn't shoot much with the 4x5, but I got at least two I'm happy with -- the schooners, and the lobster shack at York Harbor.

Dawn at Nubble Light, York, Maine

 In 1988 I had an assignment from Missions USA, the magazine of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board that took me to several northeastern states, including Maine. Louise was able to accompany me. In addition to my usual 35mm Olympus OM cameras and lenses, I carried a Pentax 6x7 medium format camera and used it to make the photo of the surf at Nubble Light. I had switched to Fujichrome 100D film by this time.

Louise scores her favorite food

Finally, we passed through Maine in our RV, coming and going to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2019. Photographically, the trip was a bust, but not for Louise, who got to eat her favorite food six days in a row. 

Maine was a great place to go back in the '80s, but has become overrun with tourism, especially along the coast. We will remember our good times there, but we aren't likely to go back.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

 

You Can't Get Away from Digital

Barn boards and blackberry vines on a Rock City Barn in northeast Louisiana.

 

Two photographic media are in general use: film and digital imaging. 

If you shoot film and want people to see your work you can make prints or project slides (or look at them on a light box or light table.) You can hang prints on the walls of your home, sell prints so other people can hang them on their walls, or, if you're either very good or very lucky, (or just happen to know somebody) you can have a show of your prints at an art gallery. These are basically the limits for even the most diehard film addict who wants nothing to do with digital.

Can you post your film photographs online? No, they will first have to be scanned. That makes them digital images. Can you publish them in a magazine or a book? No, not until they're scanned.

Your digital photographs can go directly from camera to computer to the world-wide web with no intermediate steps. Because they're digital images. In fact, if you're using a cell phone you can skip the computer step. If you want to post your film images on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or your blog or web site, they will first have to be digitized. No way around it.

You just can't get away from digital imaging. Like it or not.

Since I want my photographs to be seen by as many people as possible, I use a device called a scanner, two of them, in fact, to digitize my film images. More about that later.

(The blackberry vines growing through the boards of Rock City Barn LA-2 in northeast Louisiana were photographed with a Canon EOS A2 film camera and a Canon EF lens on Fujichrome 100 film. The slide was scanned with a Minolta-Dimage 5400 scanner.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Nostalgic for Film

 Derelict schooners, Wiscasset, Main

 I used film happily for 35 years. I did not want change to digital imaging, and did it with great reluctance. (As in, I fought it tooth and toenail.) To me, digital had no "soul."

But "the times, they were a-changin'," as the song says, and it appeared to me that I needed to adopt the new technology if I wanted to remain competitive in my profession.

Digital imaging has many advantages over film photography. Cost is one. Film and processing for a wedding was costing me three to five hundred dollars. And the sharpness and clarity of digital images was clearly superior to film images, even in those early days. My first digital camera, a six-megapixel Canon EOS 10D, made 16x20-inch prints that were indistinguishable from those from my medium format Pentax 6x7.

But still. . .
. . .I like film. There's an indefinable something about the way it looks that appeals to me. I wish I could do a better job of explaining that appeal, but as I said, it's indefinable. Perhaps it only exists in my mind. 

Anyway, I don't shoot much film anymore because digital is just so darned convenient, as well as being essentially free. 

But I'm nostalgic for film. Or maybe I'm just nostalgic for those years in my life. Good years that I would love to live again.

(The schooners (now completely rotted away) were photographed in 1984 with a Calumet-Cambo 4x5 view camera with a 210mm Rodenstock lens, and Kodak Ektachrome 64 film.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Color or Black and White?

                                                  Sourwood Lane, one of my best-loved photographs

I have great respect for black and white photography. Some of the greatest photographs ever made were on black and white film, and some of the ones I love most.

But the debate is over. Color has won. Millions of color photographs are made every day (think of all those cell-phone users snapping away) and a very, very, almost vanishingly small percent of photos are in black and white.

I shot a lot of black and white film back in the day. It was cheaper than color and I could process it myself with simple equipment and chemicals, which made it even cheaper. But digital imaging changed all that. Color was no longer expensive to shoot -- it was free! Once you had your camera and a memory card or two you could snap away to your hearts content with no further drain on your bank account.

So I no longer shot in black and white. I came to consider color the essence of my photography. And yet. . .

Sourwood Lane in black and white

. . .there's a black and white photograph locked inside every digital color image, just waiting to be let out. And its beauty may surprise you. This is just a quickie Photoshop conversion from the Sourwood Lane color file, yet it has a loveliness all its own.

Most digital cameras can be set to make both a black and white jpeg and a color RAW file at the same time. So it's win-win either way. If you have a little experience with Photoshop you can easily make a black and white from any file without losing the original.

Try it. You may like it. In fact, you may find that you've added a whole new dimension to your photography.

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

We Interrupt This Program. . .

Tucker Road in fall, McLemore Cove

This picture of Tucker Road in fall is on the cover of my llimited-edition book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait. It has nothing to do with this post, but I thought I should at least give you something nice to look at.

I missed posting yesterday because I had to take Louise to the emergency room with severe abdominal pain. We were there for seven hours before we finally got a diagnosis and were able to go home around 2 a.m. It was an attack of diverticulitis, something she has never had before. She will be on meds, clear liquids, jello, etc for several days. She has rested all day today, something that is hard for her to do because she is a very active person. (Wears me out, sometimes!) 

Tomorrow I will get back to moving our possessions from our RV to our new condo. Louise will continue to take it easy until she's over this thing. Your prayers will be appreciated.

(Pentax 6x7 medium format camera, 105mm f2.4 Takumar lens. Fujichrome 100 film scanned on an Epson Perfection 4990 Pro scanner.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

The Assignment of a Lifetime: (Part Two)

 Horse Laugh, U.S. Hwy. 11, McMinn County, Tennessee. (RCB-TN-41)

Blog Note: 

This is Part two of the birth story of the Rock City Barns book. The two parts were originally published as one article in the May, 1999 issue of Rangefinder Magazine. 

Sorting Rock City's old file cards by states and within states by highways, I planned an itinerary for my first trip and began photographing at Sweetwater, Tennessee on October 24, 1994.  Over the next 18 months, stealing time whenever my studio schedule allowed, the trail of barns led my old Chevy Blazer nearly 35,000 miles to more than 500 sites in 15 Southeastern and Midwestern states.  Nearly 250 barns were found in 14 states, with only Michigan proving barren.

With 35-year-old, often sketchy records and occasional hearsay reports as my only sources of information, finding the sites was an endlessly fascinating piece of detective work.  Barns have burned, blown down, been bulldozed for highway construction and subdivisions, or simply fallen from disuse and disrepair.  Many of the largest and finest are gone. To complicate things still further, highways have been changed, re-routed, and re-named.

Often, the only way to locate a site was to find someone who remembered the property owner:

"Do you remember so-and-so, who had a place out on Highway 11 south of here?"

"Oh, yeah, knew him well.  He and my daddy used to go fishin' together all the time.  Good ol' feller.  He's dead now."

"Well, he had this barn on his farm, with a sign that said 'See Rock City.'  Here's an old picture of it."

"Sure, I remember that ol' barn.  Fact is, I helped him take it down, back around 1985.  It had got all rotten and falling down, y'know.  Weren't safe."

I also learned to take the information I was given with a grain of salt.  The people most familiar with an area are often the least observant.  In Robbinsville, North Carolina I asked a gas station attendant about a barn.  "Oh, sure," he said, "It was just down the road here, about a half mile.  But it's been torn down."  Checking for myself, I found his directions to the site were perfect.  But not only was the barn still standing, it had just been repainted and was one of the rare barns with "See Rock City" signs on both sides!

In those pre-digital days, of course, everything was photographed on film, mostly Fujichrome 100. I began the project with a pair of Canon EOS-10S bodies and one EOS-RT and gradually upgraded my equipment so that by the time I finished I was working with two Canon A2s and a 10S.  Lenses carried were the 70-210mm f4, the 28-105mm f3.5-4.5, the 50mm f1.8, the 35mm f2, and the 24mm f2.8, all Canon EF.  Probably 90% of the photographs were made with the 24 and the 28-105.  Exposures were almost always read with a Minolta Flashmeter III in incident mode. Color filters were used frequently to render scenes the way I felt them.

Each barn was also photographed in black and white. (Pre-digital days, remember?)

An average day of photography might involve driving more than 450 miles in 12 to 15 hours, and result in locating eight or ten sites, of which three to five might have barns.  Some days were better than that, of course, and some were much worse.  I spent a total of about 75 days on the assignment, capturing images in winter snow, summer haze, the soft light of spring and the clear light of autumn. Working the sweet early and late light in midsummer meant 18-hour days and not much sleep.

I began the project with some idealism, I suppose. Expecting to find prosperous, story-book farmyards, I often found depressing scenes of rural desolation.  Most of the barns were far from any farmhouse.  Many were dilapidated, some were overgrown with brush.  I learned to take whatever each situation gave me and tried to use that to make a photograph which expressed the spirit of the place

What began as the assignment of a lifetime grew into a labor of love as I came to treasure the dignity and individuality of each old barn.  I learned to see beauty even in the isolation in which so many of them are ending their days.  I learned that they wanted to be photographed in a direct, documentary way, without artifice.  They seemed to say, "Here we are.  This is the way we are.  Please let us speak for ourselves."

(Canon EOS 10S. 24mm f2.8 Canon EF lens. Fujichrome 100 film.)

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Assignment of a Lifetime (Part One)

See Rock City Barn LA2, U.S. 165, Morehouse Parrish, Louisiana

Blog Note: We are in the process of moving into our new condo and at the same time having some renovations done. In other words, it's a very busy time! So I hope it's okay with you if I continue to repost some columns from the early days of the blog. this time it's Part One of the story of how the Rock City Barns book came to be. It was originally published in the Rangefinder Magazine, May, 1999 issue.

In Indiana, a black cat wound itself around the legs of an old farmer and looked up at me, eyes gleaming in the early light.  In Louisiana, a yellow locomotive emerged from behind a barn just at the right time, under just the right kind of sky.  In Tennessee, a pony positioned himself in front of a barn, threw back his head, and gave me the horse laugh.  Serendipity, which by definition is capricious and unpredictable, became a welcome and almost expected companion as time and again I traveled all day under overcast skies which opened to bathe a barn in rays as I arrived, then closed again.  It was my dream project, the assignment of a lifetime.  And it began with three little words: "Let's do it!"

The man who spoke them was Bill Chapin, president of Rock City Gardens, a tourist attraction near Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Behind the words, a lifetime dream: to create a book about the old barns whose painted message, "See Rock City" became one of the greatest outdoor advertising campaigns of all time.  They launched me on a project that was to occupy much of my time and effort for the next three years and affect my life and business profoundly. 

 

It began with Bill's great-uncle, entrepreneur Garnet Carter, who laid out trails and swinging bridges through ten acres of massive rock formations on the cliffs of Lookout Mountain overlooking Chattanooga.  Hoping to regain his depression-lost fortune, he opened Rock City Gardens to the public in 1932, but unfortunately nobody much came.  Not until 1936 did things improve, when he hired an enterprising young sign painter named Clark Byers to travel the length and breadth of the land painting "See Rock City" on the roof or side of every barn whose owner would allow it.  So diligent and successful was he that as many as 900 barns in 19 states may have carried the Rock City slogan over the years, making it famous around the globe. 

 

The retirement of Byers in 1968, coupled with changing highway sign laws and the completion of the Interstate system brought about a drastic reduction in the barn painting program, as Rock City began to rely on other forms of advertising -- which ultimately brought me into the picture.  As a commercial photographer with a studio in Chattanooga, I began working for the attraction in the early '80s, photographing for brochures and other advertising.  In 1988, Bill told me of his long-held dream of a book about Rock City's barns and asked me to find out what it would cost.

Although he decided not to proceed at that time, my interest was kindled.  I obtained a list of the 110 barns they were still maintaining, and whenever my travels brought me near one I made a photograph of it if possible.  In 1994, after learning that the barns being maintained by Rock City had dwindled to 85, I went back to Chapin with my photos and told him that if he wanted to do a book, now was the time.

He didn't say much.  Just looked at the pictures for about 15 minutes, asked a few questions, then said the magic words: "Let's do it!"

       

A few days later I received a box containing hundreds of old file cards, the only record of most barn locations.  On each card was the name of the last known property owner, the highway route number, and the distance from the nearest town.  Many had a small photo attached, apparently taken about 1960; but some had only rough sketches of the barns.  Inside each card was a record of rents paid (usually $3 to $5 per year) and repaint dates.  Rock City had had no contact with most of the barns since the late '60s.  The only way to find out if they were still standing was to go and see. 

 

So I went. 

 

(Canon EOS-A2, 28-105 f3.5-4.5 Canon EF lens, Fujichrome 100 film.)

 

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.

Telling Stories

Lights Out!

Cordele Drive-In Theater

U.S. Hwy. 41, Crisp County, Georgia

 

 

The thing I most like to do with my photography is tell stories. Early in my career I realized that, for me, photography is above all an art of exploration. Yet, it took a long time for this understanding to come to fruition. For many years I randomly clicked my shutter at anything and everything without any structure or purpose other than I thought it might make a good picture. My professional work was moderately successful, but I did not really know who I was as a photographer. 

 

In time, I gradually came to realize that in order to be fully engaged I need to be working toward some sort of story, whether a photo essay or a photos-and-words story. The best years of my career were the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, when I was traveling around the country and internationally, developing and shooting A-V programs. Telling stories in photos and words. This kind of work was even more comprehensive than shooting for a magazine article, because it was like making a movie; telling a complete story, but in still photos rather than motion pictures.

Later, I moved on to creating books, which is also a great vehicle for photography; perhaps even better in some ways because books are more permanent.

I’m not an art photographer, except perhaps incidentally, or perhaps I should say accidentally. I’m always looking for visual puns, but other than that I’m mostly not looking for stand-alone photographs, although I certainly take them when I find them. Some photos are a complete story in themselves and require neither context or prior knowledge. Most, however, work better when accompanied by captions or other pictures or text, and some are basically meaningless without that context.

Many of my photographs are not strong on their own, but gain strength from their context as part of a story or sequence. The thing I do, though, is photograph the “thereness” of things. Many of the photographs in Georgia: A BackroadsPortrait are like that, just “there.” Presented without art or artifice. A good example is the photo of Katie’s General Store on page 64. It’s just there and that’s just the way it looked. It bears quiet witness to a vanishing way of life in rural Georgia. As Wright Morris might have put it, it's "commonplace." Not a remarkable picture in itself, but stronger because it's part of the sequence of photographs that precede and follow it.

 

 

Katie's General Store

GA Hwy. 376

Echols County, Georgia

 

 

On the other hand, "Lights Out," the photograph at the head of this post, can stand alone, telling its story without need of a context. But it also adds strength to the sequence in which it appears, a story of time passing, a world fading away.

My domain is the old, the odd, and the ordinary; the beautiful, the abandoned, and the about to vanish away. I am a visual historian of an earlier America and a recorder of the interface between man and nature; a keeper of vanishing ways of 

life.

 

This is a repost from January 31, 2020. We closed on our new-to-us condo in Knoxville yesterday, January 31, 2023.

If you like my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia will be released in June, 2023. 

Photographs and text copyright 2023 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.