Margaret Sartor – författare

Self-taught photographer Hugh Mangum was born in 1877 in Durham, North Carolina, as its burgeoning tobacco economy put the frontier-like boomtown on the map. As an itinerant portraitist working primarily in North Carolina and Virginia during the rise of Jim Crow, Mangum welcomed into his temporary studios a clientele that was both racially and economically diverse. After his death in 1922, his glass plate negatives remained stored in his darkroom, a tobacco barn, for fifty years. Slated for demolition in the 1970s, the barn was saved at the last moment — and with it, this surprising and unparalleled document of life at the turn of the twentieth century, a turbulent time in the history of the American South.Hugh Mangum’s multiple-image, glass plate negatives reveal the open-door policy of his studio to show us lives marked both by notable affluence and hard work, all imbued with a strong sense of individuality, self-creation, and often joy. Seen and experienced in the present, the portraits hint at unexpected relationships and histories and also confirm how historical photographs have the power to subvert familiar narratives. Mangum’s photographs are not only images; they are objects that have survived a history of their own and exist within the larger political and cultural history of the American South, demonstrating the unpredictable alchemy that often characterizes the best art — its ability over time to evolve with and absorb life and meaning beyond the intentions or expectations of the artist.

Mysterious, introspective, fiercely private, and self-taught, street photographer William Gedney (1932–1989) produced impressive series of images focused on people whose lives were overlooked, hidden, or reduced to stereotypes. He was convinced that photography was a means of expression as efficient as literature, and his images were accompanied by writings, essays, excerpts from books, and aphorisms. Gedney avoided self-promotion, and his underrepresented work was largely unknown during his short lifetime. He died at the age of fifty-six from AIDS.William Gedney: Only the Lonely, 1955–1984 is the first comprehensive retrospective of his photography. It presents images from all of his major series, including eastern Kentucky, where Gedney lived with and photographed the family of laid-off coal miner Willie Cornett; San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury, where he attached himself to a group of disaffected youth, photographing them as they drifted from one vacant apartment to the next during the “Summer of Love”; early photo-reportage of gay pride parades in the eighties; Benares, India, Gedney’s first trip abroad, during which he obsessively chronicled the concurrent difficulty and beauty of daily life; and night scenes that, in the absence of people and movement, evoke a profound universal loneliness. The most complete overview of Gedney’s work to date, this volume reveals the undeniable beauty of a major American photographer.

The New York Times bestselling portrait of American adolescence.Margaret Sartor, a fiercely determined girl from rural Louisiana, who is equal parts "Holden Caulfield and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" (Atlanta Journal Constitution), presents a poignant portrait of American life during the 1970s. Crafted from diaries, notebooks, and letters, this deeply personal yet universally appealing story moves with ease between the seemingly trivial concerns of hairstyles and boys to the more profound questions of faith and identity. By turns funny and poignant, heartbreaking and profound, Miss American Pie tackles all of the decade''s issues-desegregation, drugs, the sexual revolution, the rise of feminism, and the spread of charismatic evangelical Christianity-with humor, frankness, and unexpected insight. Miss American Pie reminds us what it feels like to grow up, offering a true and honest look at a teenager grappling with the timeless questions of sex, friendship, God, love, loss, and the meaning of family. The introduction and epilogue, written by Sartor from an older perspective, reflect on those turbulent and life-shaping years, revealing how the girl in the diary turned out after all, and demonstrating that childhood-both its joys and traumas-reverberate deeply in our adult lives.

The American South has become a nexus of film production in the United States. By 2016, more major features were being shot in Georgia than in California. Commissioned by the High Museum in Atlanta as part of their Picturing the South series, Alex Harris explored cinematic representations of the South by visiting and photographing the making of over 40 independent fiction films across the region. Using a documentary approach to capture scenes that unfolded on or around the set, Harris’ images tell the story of a new South while also hinting at more universal aspects of life – the ways in which we are all actors in our own lives, creating our sets, practicing our lines, refining our characters, playing ourselves. These photographs also tell a story about our increasingly visual culture and explore the rapidly evolving world of independent filmmaking, one that is little known to audiences outside the film festival circuit.