Overview
In this illustrated talk at the Decatur (Georgia) Book Festival, August 31, 2013, Tom Rankin discusses his book One Place: Paul Kwilecki and Four Decades of Photographs from Decatur County, Georgia. Kwilecki (1928–2009), a "self-taught" photographer, lived his entire life in Bainbridge, Georgia, where he took hundreds of masterful black-and-white images over the course of forty years. "I know of no single body of images," comments Rankin, "with a reach and resonance to match what Paul accomplished in Decatur County."
Presentation
Part 1: Tom Rankin introduces the life and work of Paul Kwilecki and his relationship to Decatur County, Georgia.
Part 2: Rankin discusses the evolution of Kwilecki's photographic style and the process of assembling the book, One Place.
Part 3: A discussion of Kwilecki photographs that reveal insider-outsider tensions in Decatur County.
Part 4: Kwilecki's subjects and the continuity of his perspective across decades of "staying put."
About the Author
Tom Rankin is professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies and director of the MFA program in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University. His books include Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi, 1993), Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre: Photographs of a River Life (University Press of Mississippi, 1995), and Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible (Norton, 2000), among others. Rankin writes frequently about photography and the documentary tradition and his photographs have been widely exhibited.
Publication Update
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Cover Image Attribution:
Elberta Crate and Box Co., Bainbridge, Georgia, January 1982. Photograph by Paul Kwilecki. Courtesy of Tom Rankin.Recommended Resources
Text
Dilbeck, Perry. The Last Harvest: Truck Farmers in the Deep South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.
Kwilecki, Paul. Understandings: Photographs of Decatur County, Georgia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
Rankin, Tom. Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
———. "The Cruel Radiance of the Obvious." Southern Cultures 17, no. 2 (2011): 3–23.
———. "The Injuries of Time and Weather." Southern Cultures 13, no. 2 (2007): 3–28.
Web
Boling, Bill and Alexis Boling. Paul Kwilecki. Harmonium Films & Music. Accessed January 24, 2019. https://vimeo.com/181089719/3a68ee2db3.
“Guide to the Paul Kwilecki Photographs and Papers.” David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (Durham, North Carolina). 1960–2008. https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/kwileckipaul/.
Kwilecki, Paul. “Interview with Paul Kwilecki.” By P. J. Brownlee. Paul Kwilecki Photographs and Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (Durham, North Carolina). December 28, 1994. https://repository.duke.edu/dc/kwilecki/kwlpw03001.
“Paul Kwilecki.” The Do Good Fund. Accessed January 24, 2019. http://www.thedogoodfund.org/paul-kwilecki-southern-photography/.
Richardson, Whitney. “A Life Sold on Photography.” The New York Times. April 24, 2013. https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/a-life-sold-on-photography/.
