| Picture Taker: Photographs by Ken Elkins First Edition, Edition Contributor(s): Elkins, Ken (Author), Bragg, Rick (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 0817314784 ISBN-13: 9780817314781 Publisher: University Alabama Press OUR PRICE: $31.46 Product Type: Hardcover Published: September 2005 Annotation: Award-winning photographer Ken Elkins captures indelibly the lives and landscapes of rural Alabama. "I look at the black-and-white of a revival, at an old man in overalls kneeling as the hand of the evangelist rests on his head, as an old woman sobs in the background, her hands clasped, and I no longer question the power of faith. I see a gang of urchins walking a railroad track barefoot, and I remember how to be a boy. I see an old man in crooked suspenders shuffle hump-backed through a gate, tools in his hand, and I know what I want to do and be when my time is almost over. And I see a railroad track in the mist, one of those tracks that offers a way out of this, an escape from this isolation and poverty and inertia, and I know why so many people never leave. Because Elkins shows the reasons to stay."--from the Foreword by Rick Bragg "Ken is a master journalist with a camera, reporting on the people of the countryside as great photographers always have--with images that rise to the level of art. He and his work are alike--humane in a quietly heroic way."--Chris Waddle, Vice President for News at the "Anniston Star, from the Afterword by Basil Penny |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Photography | Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - General - Photography | Individual Photographers - General |
| Dewey: 779.997 |
| LCCN: 2004025921 |
| Physical Information: 0.76" H x 10.3" W x 11.38" (2.42 lbs) 120 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This collection of 100 haunting, sometimes humorous, but always deeply honest black-and-white photographs reveals the 42-year career of a master photographer and photojournalist. Ken Elkins retired as chief photographer of the Anniston Star in 2000, and this selection of his work demonstrates his brilliant eye for finding and capturing images of rural southern lives and landscapes in all their difficulty, candor, and humor. These are unadorned images of a timeless landscape and proud resourceful people, who know well their neighbors, honor their past, and face the tests of daily life with wit and a stoic sense of endurance. "The old scenes are gone, or going . . . and the people are different, less likely to be in overalls and print dresses, less likely to a sliver of tobacco off a sweet-smelling plug of Brown Mule. So we try to remember, imperfectly. But not Elkins. . . . He and his camera have found value in their lives that so many others--a world full--were unable to see. I have worked beside the very, very best. But I only know one picture taker. When he turns his lens on the mostly rural, mostly poor pockets of his native Alabama, something beautiful happens. He draws out the dignity and loveliness that is in these people, and spreads it out for the rest of the world to see." --Rick Bragg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of All over but the Shoutin', Somebody Told Me, Ava's Man, and The Most They Ever Had, in his foreword to Picture Taker |
Contributor Bio(s): Bragg, Rick: - Rick Bragg is the author of five books including the best sellers All Over but the Shoutin', Ava's Man, and The Prince of Frogtown. A newspaper and magazine writer who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1996, Bragg is currently a professor of writing at The University of Alabama. |