David Wharton on the Small Town South

David Wharton, who is a photographer as well as the Director of Documentary Studies and Assistant Professor of Southern Studies at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, has recently published a book of photographs entitled Small Town South, from GFT Publishing.

This book is Wharton's second photographic study of  the small-town South. He published  his first, The Soul of a Small Texas Town: Photographs, Memories, and History, in  2000.

Wharton's images are elegantly seen and classically presented, and are well worth our attention.

Rob Amberg, photographer and author of  Sodom Laurel Album and The New Road, gets them about right:

"David Wharton's Small Town South is a slow, winding visual delight of detail and uniqueness, stitched together by the region's undying devotions to God, country, family, history, and commerce. These exquisite photographs are plainly seen, stripped of drama, yet they are rich in the quiet and complexity of place. Wharton shows us the familiar but only to a point. Though his images are not meant to provide answers to questions about the meaning of the South, they reveal many layers of small town life, giving us timeless glimpses of locales we want to know better."

You can see more of Wharton's images  here and here.