Author Description

"Doy Gorton's White South 1969-70 with Jane Adams" is a handsomely printed limited edition casebound photobook that documents and serves as a virtual textbook of the look, feel and frenzy of the white society and institutions in the American south as the civil rights enactments and its movements earlier in the decade began to truly take hold in life as lived in the south. The photographs arose from a year-long project Doy Gorton undertook in 1969-1970. A young but seasoned documentary photographer at the time he obtained a grant and traveled around the south seeking to understand or at least to see white people and society through a camera lens. As a white southerner who had stood with the leaders and workers in civil rights for several years he wanted to go out with his camera to see what his fellow white southerners were up to as the times changed. From prisons, state houses, clan rallies, George Wallace campaign stops - to bus stops, drag races, and everyday street scenes Gorton meticulously and brilliant observed what was going down. With his Leica camera, Tri-X film and a keen eye he created an archive of hundreds of photographs. 101 of these photographs are now published here for the first time. Clearly the images he captured then have tremendous relevance for us in the here and now. As W. Ralph Eubanks wrote in his recent feature article on the book. "The photographs in "White South" evoke realities of the present by exposing pieces of the past." Gorton is asked frequently in academic circles and elsewhere to share his photographs and lecture on and share lessons from those days and this archive of photographs. With over a dozen essays and outstanding ethnographic, social and documentary photographic analyses and writing the book serves as a powerful textbook on one of the most significant places, times and social transformations in American history.