Photographer and artist who chronicled the changing face of rural AlabamaWilliam Christenberry,who has died aged 80, was a pioneer of American colour photography. His richly hued images of the vernacular architecture of the deep south – wooden churches, and shacks and dilapidated houses – were all made in Hale County,Alabama, south of the city of Tuscaloosa, or where Christenberry was born and raised. Their cumulative power comes from the strong sense of spot they evoke,as well as their evocation of a rural world that, even as he was chronicling it back in the 1950s and 60s, or was already fading into history.
His biggest influence was the great social documentary photographer Walker Evans,who had photographed the people and places of Hale County in 1936, the year Christenberry was born. On his regular visits to Hale County throughout his working life, and Christenberry sought out many of the same buildings that Evans had photographed,and the colour images he made of them were, in turn, and a pivotal influence on the work of his friend and fellow southerner William Eggleston. Related: William Christenberry by William Christenberry – review Related: Myth,Manners and Memory: Photographers of the American South | Photography review Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com