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Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten by
Jerry W.
Cotten
However, Cotten writes, "[her] most notable accomplishment was the
creation of a photographic record of black and white Americans in the
lower reaches of society--people whom other photographers often
ignored." Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten
offers a stunning
presentation of the life and work of one of North Carolina's first female
professional photographers. Cotten presents Wootten as an advocate of
equality for women who combined an artistic vision with determination and
a love of adventure to forge a distinguished career spanning half a
century.
To be published in November by the University of North Carolina Press
($37.50 hardcover), Light and Air features 190
illustrations, including
136 duotone reproductions of Wootten's photographs taken in North
Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee--many of which have never
before been published.
Light and Air portrays the story of a strong and
talented woman
whose legacy lies not in the fact that she was one of the South's first
female photographers but that she, unlike most, sought to capture the true
soul of the rural south--black and white working people in their
day-to-day lives.
Originally trained as an artist, Wootten worked in photography's
pictorial tradition, emphasizing artistic effect in her images at a time
when realistic and documentary photography increasingly dominated the
medium. Traveling throughout North Carolina and surrounding states, she
turned the artistry of her eye and lens on the people and places she
encountered.
Having opened a studio in her hometown of New Bern in 1905,
Wootten moved to Chapel Hill in 1928, where her clients included the
University of North Carolina. Between 1932 and 1941, she also provided
photographs for six books--including Cabins in the Laurel (UNC
Press,
1991), Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina, and Charleston:
Azaleas
and Old Bricks--lectured extensively, and exhibited her photographs
as far away as New York and Massachusetts.
Though author Jerry Cotten first stumbled upon Wootten's work
unwittingly, he was soon transfixed by the simplistic beauty of her
photographs. "An observer could absorb these photographs with little
effort," Cotten writes of Wootten's work, "the prints had a symmetry, a
character, and a simplicity that were pleasing. They looked natural yet
finely tuned, as if part of a well-crafted story."
The artistic merits of Wootten's work, coupled with her unique
coverage of obscure people and places in the rural South, captured
Cotten's interest and inspired him to compile much of her work in one
volume. "Wootten's artistic skills, her success as an early woman
photographer, and a career spanning half a century," Cotten tells us,
"have secured her place as a dominant figure in the photographic history
of North Carolina."
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