Sign-In
Cart
Photographing Southern Writers: An Unlikely Journey to the Soul of Southern Literature
Paperback
ArtistsGeneral ReferenceGeneral Photography
Publisher Price: $43.95
Publisher: Summer House Publications
Published: Sep 1 2025
Pages: 152
Weight: 1.11
Height: 0.39 Width: 11.00 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Forty-six years ago, I decided on - or perhaps fell into - the idea of photographing three generations of the South's most celebrated writers. It was an idea born out of a fall 1979 conversation with my friend William Price Fox (Bill Fox) at a local Columbia bar as we discussed my literary prospects which were, in Bill's opinion, not all that great.
You know what, Fox told me, reflecting on the entirety of the miserable fiction I had written for his creative writing classes over the last eighteen months, you're a much better photographer than you are a writer. You should do that instead. I took him at his word. A few weeks later I photographed Fox after he dismissed our class, and, as the cliché goes, the rest is history.
It was a decision that took me on a magical and wholly unexpected nearly six-year journey into the homes and lives of some of my literary heroes: Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Anne Tyler, William Styron, Tennessee Williams, Cormac McCarthy, and dozens of others. Some (Walker and Cormac, in particular) I visited and corresponded with regularly for years. We were friends.
This book is the story of this unlikely photographic journey into the heart of Southern literature, told through a selection of the Southern writers I photographed between 1979 and 1984 and originally published by the University of Georgia Press in 1985 as Images of the Southern Writer. This book also includes a selection of the many other writers I met along the way - Tom Wolfe, Joseph Heller, Tom Stoppard, Richard Hugo, Seamus Heaney, George Plimpton, Czeslaw Milosz, Toni Morrison, Garrison Keillor, Tim O'Brien, and others. It is a story fueled by extreme naivete, inexperience, and youthful enthusiasm. Nevertheless, there is a profound yet deceptively simple lesson to be found here, and it is this.
Clarity about the rightness of our life decisions only comes with the passage of time. Or as Apple founder Steve Jobs put it in 2005 when addressing the Stanford University graduating class You can't connect the dots about the decisions we make in our lives when looking forward. It is only when we look backward in the rearview mirror that it all makes sense. Or perhaps, even more simply put-never doubt the advice and guidance that pure serendipity offers. It is hardly ever wrong.
Also from
Morrow, Mark
Also in
Artists
Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News Into Art
Kendall, Joshua
Hardcover
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
Johnson, Victoria
Hardcover
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Iconic Films
Rapold, Nicolas
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Hardcover
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Modigliani: Man and Myth - Biography and Works of Italian Painter and Sculptor Amedeo Modigliani
Modigliani, Jeanne
Paperback
The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome
Morrissey, Jake
Paperback
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
Jones, Brian Jay
Paperback
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
Kurtz, Glenn
Hardcover
Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired
Naumann, Francis M.
Hardcover
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
Rozzo, Mark
Paperback
Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator
Roy, Sandip
Hardcover
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin
Weschler, Lawrence
Paperback
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)
Laing, Olivia
Paperback
Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture
Thoreson, Trygve
Paperback
Broken Glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece
Beam, Alex
Paperback
Autopsy of My Former Self: A journey through grief, transformation, addiction, personal triumph, and purpose
Burse, Jermaine Danté
Paperback
How to Think Like an Artist: Painters and Sculptors Who Have Changed the Way We See the World
Daunt, Catherine
Hardcover
The Artist and His Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Public Museum in the United States
Webber, Diane
Paperback
Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life
Griest, Stephanie Elizondo
Paperback
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol [50th Anniversary Edition]: From A to B and Back Again
Warhol, Andy
Paperback
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Paperback
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island
Gordon, Gisele
Monkman, Kent
Paperback
A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century
Rybczynski, Witold
Paperback
House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed
Forden, Sara Gay
Paperback
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: Art, Poetry, and the Imagining of a New World
Hoare, Philip
Hardcover
Me, My Guitar, & Nina Simone: Stories of My Musical Life and Adventures with Nina
Schackman, Al
Hardcover
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr: My Words, My Photographs
Jones, Wendy
Parr, Martin
Hardcover
Passion Is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash - Revised and Updated 50th Anniversary Edition
Gilbert, Pat
Paperback
Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church's Greatest Work of Art
LaFarge, Annik
Paperback