turbine - Color, Photos, and One Fuzzy Little Boy in a Field

August 30, 2010

Color, Photos, and One Fuzzy Little Boy in a Field

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Jack Delano - Chopping cotton on rented land near White Plains, Greene County, Ga. (Farm Security Administration, 1941)

A lot of the color photos I’ve seen from before the 1950s strike me as stiff, over-worked, or so experimental as to be a “Hello, World.” They’re cool from a technical standpoint, but they often don’t tell you any more about the subject than a well-produced monochrome image would.

Given the costliness of the film and the complexity of the process, it’s easy to understand why early color photographers had to be choosy about picking the subjects and conditions that their camera could capture well (rather than, as is ideally the case, working the other way around).

But, sometimes, an old color photo brings a distant image to life and produces something kind of special. The best ones make their subjects and their surroundings seem far more real and intimate.

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My Great Aunt Kitty was a sharecropper. She picked cotton, and traveled from Hornersville, Missouri to surrounding fields and farms in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi. She pulled bolls from the pods and jammed them in a large canvas sack slung on her shoulder. It was best to pick in the early mornings. Partly because of the heat, but partly because they got paid by weight, and dew-soaked cotton weighed more than dry.

My grandmother told us stories of bleeding fingertips at the start of picking season; hard, calloused hands at the end. She ran away at 17 and met a brooding Swede from Nebraska. They married and had three kids. Two boys and a girl. The girl grew up and married a mercurial Jew from Salina. They had me and then my sister. Aunt Kitty stayed put and met a man called Monk. He wore his hair slicked back, and his ears stuck out from his head. Their sister Hattie stayed put, too, and she married a man called John.

Kitty and Monk had some kids. Late in life she gave birth to Steven Earl, who wasn’t quick as the others. Kitty wasn’t picking cotton then. She’d stopped years before and spent her time knitting afghans and tissue cozies. She got some Social Security money and earned a little more here and there doing clerical work and some cleaning. As far as I know Steven Earl never stood in a field and watched his momma work.

When he was young, folks from the city came and tested Stephen Earl. They told my Great Aunt Kitty he could probably live just fine on his own one day if she agreed to send him to the state school in Poplar Bluff. Kitty didn’t want government hands on the boy, so she told them no. Eventually he learned to sign his name and do some simple math. He could add and subtract and figure what people owed him for lawnmower repair and yard work. He once taught me “colored” meant black people.

My grandmother died, and my grandfather died. My Great Aunt Hattie died, and Uncle John died, and Monk died, too. My Great Aunt Kitty and Steven Earl still live in a small, closed house in Hornersville with three dogs under the porch, cats inside, and a sofa that smells of urine. I have no idea what she ever hoped or dreamed.

10:49am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlJibyzq9oH

(Notes: 274)