A true song of the South. In splendid photographs and quiet, musing words, the South comes alive in all its independent history. And not just a South as the North sees it, in all it's flaring cliches, but as it sees itself. This large-sized, magnificent creation of a book portrays magnolia blossoms, of course, but also very much the pluck and charming eccentricity and unaffected worth of the South. The photographs speak of a nation, a section of the country, an old-time goodness unspoiled by consumerism. The 15 original stories by Kathryn Windham ( a respected journalist, some 82 years old) capture the small town flavor of the South in the 1930s as seen from the mind of a happy child who remembers flowers and large families and, especially, the family cook, Thurza. The photographs are full-blown portraits of a heritage and they range across the South, from Florida to Kentucky, from North Carolina to Alabama. In the days before exact recipes, when family cooks made food by feel and look and taste, Thurza made her soups and pies and cornbread and chicken the old way, by instinct and devotion. You look at these pages, entranced. This is the grand South, from the mind and eyes of the South. And it's a family album that tells the story of courtesy and trust and old-time way. The photographs of the people, the land, the structures of life from award-winning photographer Cooper have the same essential thread of consciousness as the stories, and they are the visual representations of goodness and a very special American way of being. Jay Bail - Executive Editor, The Book Reader
Kathryn Tucker Windham and Chip Cooper seem at first to be unlikely friends. One is a lady from the Black Belt, the other a boy from the hill country. One was a child in the 1920’s, the other in the 1950’s. One is a writer, the other a photographer.
But in COMMON THREADS: STORIES AND PHOTOGRAPHS from the Timeless South, these unlikely partners tread common ground, sharing stories and images that celebrate the rituals, beliefs, and icons that constitute the unique culture of the South. Windham and Cooper are keen observers and chroniclers of the Southern way of life and here, they celebrate images and symbols that represent the region’s storied past but remain central to the Southern experience today.
Having lived through most of this century, Kathryn Tucker Windham is a valuable witness to the changes and continuities in Southern folkways. She remembers the days when folks gathered in post office lobbies to gossip, make dates, announce engagements. These and other meeting places – homecomings, political rallies, funerals, weddings – figure importantly in her work, as they traditionally have in Southern life. Infused with a strong sense of place and ritual, Windham’s tales are meant to stir memory, to describe the South not only as it once was, but as it is today, a place of pathos, mystery, beauty, and humor.
Chip Cooper, born at the century’s halfway mark brings to COMMON THREADS the same appetite for discovering and appreciating his native land. Cooper is fascinated by the beauty and decay in the landscape, by the exceptional in the everyday: a strand of early-morning fog stretched across a deserted highway, the rusted patina of a junked car, one spider lily lifting its head above the rest. His photographs raise everyday objects to the status of icons. Though they are of objects and places, not humans, his photos nevertheless evoke the figures of those who are absent. In his work, one senses the ghosts of days long gone.
Taken together, Windham’s words and Cooper’s images complement – and complicate – each other. Their works celebrate Southerners’ complex relationship to place, the importance of community and family, the ongoing power of superstition and ritual. Their shared vision speaks to both the diversity and the continuity of the Southern experience, as they remind us that the past lives on, even in spaces occupied by the present. The homes and churches in Cooper’s photos remain a vital part of the landscape, just as the people and rituals in Windham’s stories live in her telling.
COMMON THREADS links the artistic visions of Cooper and Windham and weaves a connection between the artists, their subjects, and those who view this work. The book also plots a course from the early decades of this century to contemporary times, a thread that binds the stories and images into an expressed idea of an authentic South. The book thus becomes a kind of meeting place, where the artists share with each other and with the reader, and where all readers share in a celebration of the Southern experience.
