[HN Gopher] Baldwin Lee on his rediscovered images of the deep s...
___________________________________________________________________
Baldwin Lee on his rediscovered images of the deep south
Author : nkurz
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-03-12 12:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| macintux wrote:
| > Often, on his arrival in a new town in Alabama or Mississippi,
| he would head straight to the police headquarters to ask for
| advice on which areas he should avoid for his own safety.
| Wherever the local sheriff warned him not to go, he went. Did he
| encounter any animosity on his lone travels? "The only hostility
| I experienced was from white people," he replies. "I had a number
| of run-ins that were not pleasant - guns pulled on me, a rifle
| aimed at my face. There is a lot at stake there for some people
| when they suddenly see an outsider, especially an outsider with a
| camera."
| ghotli wrote:
| I've always been into maps and I have a strong distaste for how
| those in charge in the southern cities I've lived in seem to be
| okay with the status quo. It's like they haven't driven around
| outside of the nicer parts of town even once. Friend of mine who
| I like to play Geoguessr with sent me this here recently.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0814749,-89.9719029,3a,79.1y...
|
| Memphis, TN. Inside the interstate loop north of the airport,
| within two miles of million dollar homes and the most pedestrian
| nice part of the city. This building has a for rent sign on the
| other side with people clearly living in it. The large city park
| directly west is blocked off with cinder blocks at almost every
| entrance but someone keeps the grass mowed. On the other side of
| that is where Young Dolph was murdered walking out from buying
| cookies in broad daylight.
|
| To me this picture from Jan 2023 shows a situation as bad as the
| images from the 80s in this post. Makes me want to call child
| protective services for whoever is growing up in there.
|
| Surely if you start to look for it you'll find something like
| this in many places of the world. This post being about racism
| and poverty in the south reminded me of it, nothing more.
| nostromo wrote:
| That's not just a Southern thing. That image looks warm and
| inviting compared to the tent cities surrounded by trash heaps
| I've seen around west coast cities, notable Portland, Seattle,
| and LA.
|
| It's also notable that if you look at the street view from a
| different day, it is all cleaned up. Maybe someone moved out of
| their apartment that day and just treated the commons area like
| a dump.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0813137,-89.9719149,3a,75y,2...
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Seeing his photo from 1973 makes me feel weird. He looks like any
| young guy on Instagram a few years ago. But he's this old dude
| now
| xsmasher wrote:
| It'll happen to yooouuu!
|
| Kidding, but is there a word for this kind of Sonder? When you
| realize that your grandparents used to be people? Or when you
| notice that the "grown-ups" are now you, and you have no idea
| what you're doing? And that they probably didn't either?
|
| I get it when I realize "huh, this is the age my parents were
| when I was born," "this is the age they were when I went to
| college," etc. etc.
|
| We were always somewhat insulated from it because pictures of
| young-old-folks were all black and white, but kids born today
| will see the tiktoks that their parents made. I wonder if that
| will shorten the emotional distance.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Just dropping in here to add that Baldwin Lee was an excellent
| photography professor, and is one of the big reasons I kept on
| doing photography as a semi-pro hobby long after college. A
| bright, kind, and enthusiastic man in everything he pursued. Wild
| seeing his name randomly come up here!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-13 23:00 UTC)