January Issue 2000
Reflections of South Carolina - A Photo Essay on The Palmetto State
A Book Review
by Lese Corrigan
Reflections of South
Carolina is Robert C. Clark's newest
book on South Carolina. Clark has photographed the state for eighteen
years. His work has been published in National Geographic books,
Newsweek and Smithsonian. The book's title is one
a photographer would love, as what the camera records on film
is the light that has "reflected" off of the objects
framed in the camera's viewfinder.
Perusing the pages of this book one travels the entire state of South Carolina through the photographic work of Clark. Paired with these images is text by Tom Poland, who has taught creative writing and been published in many magazines as well as having collaborated with Clark in the past on other books on South Carolina. The text is minimal, a short paragraph for each image, and informative. The combination of photographs and text provides an overview of the state. The foreword by Walter Edgar, who is a professor of southern studies at the University of South Carolina and has written South Carolina: A History, provides enough history to enhance the appreciation of all readers, rather, viewers, for the depth of the state as well as its breadth.
The book is mostly documentary. It shows clearly the diversity of the state - from industrial plants to window washers to the Carolina bays. It includes hunters, frogs, churches, kayakers, covered bridges. oystermen, and canola. BMWs, upper state, lower state and that in-between are all represented. Strollers, cadets, singers, re-enactors, potters, the living, the dead, the hardly begun are all between the pages.
Naturally, South of the Border and the edge of the sea to the ridges of the mountains can be viewed. City, country, beach - all seen with a few turns of pages. Recreation, relaxation, work, play, buy, sell, eat, float, indoors, outdoors - one stop viewing of all - the all that makes South Carolina the complex, growing state that it is.
Not known for our changing seasons or the color manifestations of the seasons, Clark illustrates clearly that spring, summer, fall and winter have very different looks in this state. The image of spider lilies filling the Catawba river with their starlike white blaze against the blue gray of the water and fog is an accomplished photographic endeavor capturing a view that is at once static and full of movement. The photograph of an old barn set against the yellow blossoms in a field of canola is striking. (That barn has since disappeared.) The ethereal nature of the photograph of snow on bales of hay along the highway in Orangeburg County is an image belonging to a bygone era.
Commercial and fine arts photographs are often side by side in this book. It is an interesting collection of images which replicates the duplexity of South Carolina in the proud and shabby, the elegant and the downtrodden, the glitzy and the natural in the hush of sunset over the lake or sunrise on the river. Whether cloaked in sun, fog, rainbows, day or night, Clark has presented the full range of this southeastern state.
Reflections of South Carolina consists of 193 photographs- all color. It is a hardback book published by the University of South Carolina Press and is available at local bookstores for $39.95.
Lese Corrigan is a native Charlestonian who is an artist, educator, writer and consultant in the visual arts field. She also is manager of The Verner Gallery in Charleston.
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
427, Bonneau, SC 29431
Telephone, Answering Machine and FAX: 843/825-3408
E-Mail: carolinart@aol.com
Subscriptions are available for $18 a year.
Carolina Arts
is published monthly by Shoestring
Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2000 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2000 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.