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    Into the Flatland
    Into the Flatland
    Into the Flatland
    Ebook78 pages28 minutes

    Into the Flatland

    By Kathleen Robbins and Tom Rankin

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    Photographs from a return to the old family farm on the Mississippi Delta

    Capturing the rich contrasts of the land and the intimate history of generations in the Mississippi Delta, Into the Flatland, by Kathleen Robbins, is a series of photographs documenting the terrain, people, and culture of her ancestry. The photographer returned to her family's farm Belle Chase as an adult in 2001 after completing graduate studies in New Mexico. She and her brother then lived there for nearly two years, breathing life back into family properties that had been long dormant.

    In this series, which won the Photo-NOLA prize in 2011, Robbins highlights the diversity of the landscape of the delta, from expansive, dusty cotton fields to green, vibrant swamps. Her photographs capture the people and the architecture that are present on the land and also reminiscent of a time long past, before the mechanization of farming and the exodus of her people from their native soil. The presence of Robbins's family in some of her photographs brings an intimacy to her portrait of the delta and shows the tension between past and present.

    Including a short story by a National Endowment for the Arts recipient, Cynthia Shearer, Into the Flatland transports the reader into the rich history of Mississippi. At turns both colorful and gray, the photographs capture not only the delta landscape, but also the stark and rugged images of people and buildings that sink as deeply into the land as the roots of the trees in the woods and swamps. As large masses of birds flock to the vast blue sky, Robbins remains fixed on the ground, her lens trained on the home and the landscape of her past. The foreword is written by photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist Tom Rankin who serves as director of the Center for Documentary Studies and is an associate professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of South Carolina Press
    Release dateJan 14, 2015
    ISBN9781611174168
    Into the Flatland
    Author

    Kathleen Robbins

    Kathleen Robbins is an associate professor of art, the photography program coordinator, and an affiliate faculty of southern studies at the University of South Carolina. Her photographs have been exhibited at the New Orleans Photo Alliance, the Light Factory Museum of Contemporary Photography & Film, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and the Southeast Museum of Photography. Her work has been featured in Fraction Magazine, Flak Photo, Conscientious, Humble Arts New York, NPR’s Picture Show, Oxford American, and Garden and Gun. She is represented by the Rebekah Jacob Gallery in Charleston. In 2012 Robbins was part of the Critical Mass Top 50 as selected by Photolucida and she was the recipient of the 2011 PhotoNOLA Review Prize.

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      Book preview

      Into the Flatland - Kathleen Robbins

      INTO THE FLATLAND

      Short Story by Cynthia Shearer

      Foreword by Tom Rankin

      Photographs by Kathleen Robbins

      INTO THE FLATLAND

      © 2015 University of South Carolina

      Photographs © Kathleen Robbins

      Short story © Cynthia Shearer

      Foreword © Tom Rankin

      Published by the University of South Carolina Press

      Columbia, South Carolina 29208

      www.sc.edu/uscpress

      24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15       10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data can be found at http://catalog.loc.gov/

      ISBN 978-1-61117-415-1 (cloth)

      ISBN 978-1-61117-416-8 (ebook)

      Front cover photograph: Geese

      Contents

      Foreword

      Tom Rankin

      Preface

      Kathleen Robbins

      THE PHOTOGRAPHS

      STILL LIFE WITH SHOTGUN AND ORANGES

      Cynthia Shearer

      Acknowledgments

      Foreword

      The Mississippi Delta could be the most photographed place on earth—if not now, eventually. The magnetism of the Delta sprouts in part from the visible contrasts of the place: soil more fertile than most in the world, alongside virulent and uninhabitable swamplands; communities holding some of the richest while also the poorest inhabitants; over-soaked wet and drought-ridden land; lush green and somber gray seasons; a landscape defined by shapely hardwood breaks and infinite horizons. As the Delta can be rich and fertile, it can also be poor and desolate; as one can hear the powerful chords of humanity’s best music there, one also knows of Delta nights of terror and injustice. In part it’s these extreme contrasts that grace the culture with its irresistible power, creating a deep and at times confusing paradox.

      Artists of all stripes and leanings have migrated in and out of the Delta, fueled by an aesthetic dynamism that is palpable, alluring, and profoundly felt. Distinct from all the travelers, visitors, and recent Delta arrivals, Kathleen Robbins draws her artistic energy from a deeply placed history within the Delta, from knowing familial stories and domestic vegetations and from her people’s long presence in Leflore County. When Kathleen Robbins ventures into the flatland, it’s an act of return and remembrance, nothing at all like a first or new encounter.

      A Delta daughter, in her eighties at the time, once told me her father would say of someone he respected and admired that he covers all the ground he stands on. Such statements are expansive, metaphoric measurements based on the solid presence of the earth, the soil, a calculation born of the culture and life of agriculture.

      Drainage has always determined the destiny

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