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Table of Contents

Interview with Deborah Cole

Raise Your Game with a DIY Photography Workshop

The Black and White Hue of the City

Goalposts

Rotan Switch

Street Shooters of August 2021

Rotan Switch

Lisa McCord

In 1979, I was twenty-one years old when I began documenting life on my grandparents’ cotton farm in Rotan, Arkansas. Rotan Switch takes its name from the community’s central landmark – a landmark that remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of race and injustice. In the past, the railroad switch was where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Arkansas Delta. This series acknowledges the history of my rural home, one that we must shed light on to move into a more just future.

I realize that these photographs are complicated when seen in the context of the social and economic structures of the rural South.

Although these subjects are family to me, as a white photographer and the granddaughter of a well-known farm owner, my photographs of the Black community implicate my own role in reinforcing these power structures. These systemic oppressions are deeply troubling.

I developed close relationships with the people who worked on the farm. They welcomed me into their homes, and I hung out at the juke joints and honky-tonks where they would go to relax after a hard week of work. We shared fried chicken and black-eyed peas. We sang “Sweet Jesus Carry Me Home” at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church.

After forty years, I have come to realize that the photographs I took in Rotan are explorations of home. My hope is to celebrate and honor this community I love and grew up with in the Mississippi Delta. For me, these images are tender reminders of people and places I love.

Lisa McCord

Lisa McCord is a fine art and documentary photographer from the Arkansas Delta who lives and works in Los Angeles and Arkansas. Focusing on her experiences on her family’s cotton farm, her creative practice explores concepts of storytelling, memory, and the passage of time. McCord received her BFA from San Francisco Art Institute and earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She also attended New York University, Le Contrejour, Paris, and The Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. She taught photography at several high schools and universities in the LA area including Pepperdine University. She has shown her work in galleries and museums internationally, including SoHo Photo Gallery and Carrie Able Gallery in New York; Bruce Lurie and Building Bridges in Los Angeles; Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins; Classic Photographs Los Angeles, the Annenberg Space for Photography Museum in LA, and the Cotton Museum in Memphis. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including Black & White Photography (UK edition), Float Magazine, and Feature Shoot. She was a Critical Mass Finalist in 2015 and 2016. McCord’s work is in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

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Articles
August 2021

Interview with Deborah Cole

A business owner turned street photographer shares her passion for connecting with people and places.

Raise Your Game with a DIY Photography Workshop

Virginia Hines dives deep with photographers she admires with DIY workshops.

The Black and White Hue of the City

Fidan Nazimqizi shares experiences through her photos.

Goalposts

When Sofia Yu took to the streets during lockdown, she began to notice a common thread in her photos.

Rotan Switch

Explorations of home by Lisa McCord.

Street Shooters of August 2021

Top contributions from members of our community

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