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A Sense of Place
By Christopher Scribner
DECEMBER 15, 1997:
The Mississippi Delta has long fascinated Americans. In Dixie
Rising, Peter Applebome notes that the region is "still such a presence
that people always talk of going 'into the Delta' as if the place should
have border guards and crossing gates." The Delta stands in counterpoint to
many American ideals and expectations--it's rural, undeveloped, and poor.
It has a timeless element too. And it is, to borrow the title of a book by
historian James Cobb, "the most Southern place on earth."
For a place with such a prototypically Southern image, the Delta has a
surprising past: It was not extensively settled by whites and African
Americans until after the Civil War. Thus the region's racial and economic
legacy, as well as its rich cultural history, do not date from the Old
South or slavery but from sharecropping, tenant farming, and other
traditions that marked the postwar South. This most Southern place has also
nurtured a distinctive element of American culture, the blues. A homegrown
combination of work songs, spirituals, and white folk music, the blues
reflect the sorrow and the pride of the Delta's black population.
Bill Steber, a staff photographer for The Tennessean, has made
more than 30 trips into the Delta since 1992, in an ongoing effort to
document both the traditions and the practitioners of the blues. Sixty-two
of his prints are currently on view in a stunning show at MTSU's Baldwin
Photographic Gallery. The legendary bluesman Robert Johnson once sang, "I
got stones in my pathway/And my road seems dark at night/I got a pain in my
heart/It has taken my appetite." Steber, a lifelong blues fanatic, titled
the show "Stones in My Pathway" after this song. The photographs on display
mix portraits of blues players with moments from juke joints and rural
vistas of the Delta.
Steber says he wants to capture the cultural context of the blues, a
context that has begun to vanish in the wake of the growing homogenization
of American culture. "The purpose of my photographs," he explains, "is to
answer the question, 'Why did the blues come from this area?' This was once
one of the country's pure cultural meccas, and I want to record what's left
of the remnants of the old culture before it's changed or altered
irrevocably." Steber's work does convey the relationship between the
Delta's people and contemporary blues; however, he has just begun to place
the music in its cultural context.
All 62 of the plainly framed black-and-white photographs include spare
descriptive titles, such as "Cotton," "Baptism," "Parchman Band," "Jimmy
and Friend," "Jukin' at Thompson Grocery," and "Sun Session Music Man Mose
Vinson." The simplicity of the titles plays off the full range of contrasts
in each picture and the resonant emotional chords that many of the images
evoke.
"Stones in My Pathway" has two parts, although it is not formally
divided as such: one group of photos is a study in people, while the other
is a study in place. The exhibit includes 34 portraits, most of them posed,
although Steber also mixes in candid shots of musicians at work. Most of
these portraits have a spontaneous feel, even as the photographer utilizes
a vast array of techniques to convey the personalities of his subjects.
Steber says he shot some of his subjects up to eight times in an attempt to
capture their true character.

Delta rhythm
Bluesman David Johnson, one of the Bill Steber
images on view in "Stones in My Pathway" at MTSU's Baldwin Photographic
Gallery.
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Most of the portraits are tight shots, and in many the artists hold
their instruments, although few play them. More often than not, Steber
hones in on the musicians' hands and their faces, especially the eyes, and
he uses selective depth of field to draw the viewer in. The effect can be
striking, especially when the subjects' gnarled hands and lined visages
contrast with their sharp, clear, and eager eyes. The weakest portrait,
interestingly enough, is of B.B. King, the best known of Steber's subjects.
Unlike the other prints, this one, featuring the guitarist posing by some
railroad tracks, feels like a publicity shot. It's stylized but lacking in
emotional depth.
Steber's photographs of the region itself depict agricultural and
religious traditions, along with the joyous release that takes place
regularly in the area's juke joints. Three photographs from this body of
work stand out. In "Cotton," a single cotton plant stands in sharp focus in
the foreground, while in the hazy background a figure dragging a croker
sack bends down to pick a plant. In another, several people stand
waist-deep in Moon Lake as a preacher and deacons ready to baptize three
anxious girls. A water-stained tree frames the ceremony, its bare majesty
conveying a sense of timelessness about the impending event.
A third picture, taken inside a juke joint, suggests the vital
connection between the blues and the people who live in the Delta. In the
right side of the print, Steber shows a couple dancing. All we can see is
the back side of the man--whose belt tells us his name is Jimmy--and a
woman's arm around his waist; nevertheless, the limited detail tells us
everything we need to know about these two people. On the left, in soft
focus, is a bluesman whose music has unleashed the rush of romantic
possibility hinted at by the dancing lovers.
With these photographs, Steber confronts the central dilemma of his
project. He says he wants to capture "what's left of those traditions [that
shaped the blues], not create a contemporary portrait of what life is like
in the Delta." The elderly couple picking cotton, for instance, is an
anomaly in today's Mississippi. In this regard, Steber's enterprise
resembles that of the famous American photographer Edward Curtis, who in
the early 20th century took pictures of Native Americans recreating their
folk traditions. In other words, he's trying to capture the past after it's
gone.
Complicating matters further is the fact that these photographs avoid
confronting the brutal and degrading aspects of the Delta's past. But
Steber's work stands on its own regardless, for his straightforward,
documentary style prevents him from romanticizing his subjects. Steber's
photographs do contain glimpses of the region's difficult past--in the
wizened faces of the people, in the spare furnishings of the clubs, and in
the (all too few) shots of people's homes. But by holding back, Steber
ensures that we feel no pity for his subjects. Moreover, his juke joint
pictures show the continuing vitality of the local culture. The Delta
blues, we understand, is distinct from the commercial blues now riding a
crest of popularity in American culture.
Steber's project began in the fall of 1992 after he completed an
assignment about the Natchez Trace for The Tennessean; on his return
trip, he decided to travel back to Nashville via Highway 61, which cuts
through the heart of the Delta. On an impulse, he visited the home of Son
Thomas, a bluesman, folk artist, and gravedigger. The visit "blew his
mind," he says, and his pictures that day were the first of more than
12,000 he has since taken of the Delta and its people.
Steber says he does not know when the project will end. He once held the
illusion that he could complete it in three or four visits, but no longer
does he feel that way. "The more time you spend there," the photographer
says, "the more doors you open and questions you raise." In the meantime,
we can all enjoy the rich photographic results of his travels.
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