True South
Learning about the South is a great step towards understanding America, for in some ways, the rest of America is becoming more like the South, notably in her music, her politics, and her religious trends. At times it seems the South has changed greatly, because of the influx of Northerners into urban centers, but surveys show those whose roots are in the South retain a high degree of traditional attitudes in terms of family, religion, race, and militarism. For many, the modern South is the remnant of a lost utopia.
The South's identity, according to Flannery O'Connor, results from beliefs and qualities "absorbed from the scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: a distrust of the abstract, a sense of human dependence on the grace of God, and a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured."
These photographs portray visual manifestations of that Southern identity. I’ve spent quite a bit of time photographing along the back roads of the South. I believe there is much to be learned along the way. Sometimes the story is written in the faces we meet; sometimes most eloquently in the way we embellish our vehicles and homes, our vernacular achitecture, small business signs, even tombstones.
Along highways like US 80, there is a human scale, an individualistic flair created by the owners of small businesses or small town homes which often reveal charm, humor and personality lacking from modern corporate design. I plan to continue searching for expressions of the South’s most creative aspects, as well as the tragic aspects of her history..
Martin Luther King once said that despite the opposition he had encountered, he believed that Southerners had an essential warmth and humanity that would lead to a true conciliation there, before it happened in other regions. It’s an intriguing prediction.
On a more universal level, these images are about people and places that have been around, have taken a few hits, been bashed and battered and bruised... but still can laugh about it, are still looking for the main chance... still hopeful, positive, transcendent. Open to possibilities, bearing the unmistakable singes of moments of bliss.
There are some roads that lead into a whole other world, an underworld of images that have vanished from the radar of the mainstream. On those roads I found the places I like the best... Found a kind of poetic completeness in the fact that photography uses light to create images, whose purpose is to help people find enlightenment.
-- Paul Dagys
