Reviewed by:

• Capturing the South: Imagining America’s Most Documented Region by Scott L. Matthews
• Carol Quirke

Travel writers, poets, ethnographers and other social scientists, musicologists, folklorists, journalists, and photographers made “the American South . . . the most documented place on earth” (p. 2). Scott L. Matthews surveys this oeuvre; his history’s title conveys that he is equally interested in what the [End Page 145] region’s rich vein of documentary studies communicates about its practitioners. For Matthews, documentarians’ will to chart “appealing primitivism and appalling pathology” often overshadowed much else—hence the book explores documentarians’ motives and mythologizing (p. 239). If James Agee claimed the camera testified to “the cruel radiance of what is” (James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men [Boston, 1941], p. 9), Matthews argues that documentarians’ witnessing often resulted in patronizing attempts at reform or twisted caricature that still adhere to the South. They conspired to preserve a “premodern” regionalism before “modernity wiped it away,” yet Matthews evidences how documentary subjects often rejected such representations (p. 2).

The author’s well-researched case studies span the twentieth century. Beginning with social scientist Howard W. Odum’s development of the University of North Carolina’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, Matthews moves to New Deal–era Farm Security Administration (FSA) images of a Georgia county through Jack Delano’s eyes. For the postwar period, Capturing the South: Imagining America’s Most Documented Region explores musicologist/musician John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, who tracked down and then promoted the “high lonesome sound” of Appalachian singers (p. 113). Matthews then investigates Danny Lyon’s evocative photos of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and finishes with a deep dive into Hale County, Alabama, where Let Us Now Praise Famous Men is set.

Matthews’s probing of a range of documentary materials is a strength, allowing him to identify common patterns of representation. He also delineates documentary projects’ overlapping audiences. For example, Odum’s staff introduced photographer Dorothea Lange to several southern communities. Photographers, academics, policy makers, and the general public then engaged with this imagery, a generation later embraced by folk lovers, art enthusiasts, and political activists. Another strength is Matthews’s mining of poor southerners’ reactions to their documentation. One Kentucky musician shot and killed an interviewer. Most subjects found less brutal forms of resistance. Matthews makes an important scholarly intervention in demonstrating how elites, such as Zora Neale Hurston or W. E. B. Du Bois, and common sharecroppers or churchgoers registered distaste or actively sabotaged documentarians’ efforts to pin down southern folkways.

For half a century, critics and scholars have argued photographers exert an adverse power over their subjects. Matthews’s analysis provides evidence where others offer theory alone; but as each chapter shows documentarians forcing themselves upon resisting subjects, the argument becomes formulaic. Greater suppleness in limning the relations between subject and maker would persuade more. Similarly, Capturing the South flattens differences in the wide variety of practitioners who made the South their subject. Certainly, documentarians in the center (urban North) sought to preserve an “authentic” culture in the periphery (rural South). And yet what drew such diverse people as snobbish, WASPy Walker Evans; genteel, racist Odum, a southerner; or Jewish Brooklynite and antiracist Lyon to documenting the South? Lyon was held in high esteem by his subjects and his activist sponsor, SNCC. Ultimately, SNCC [End Page 146] advanced Black photographers, paralleling the movement’s radicalization to Black Power. This does not appear proof of Lyon’s “well-meaning white liberal[ism]” (pp. 187–88). A final concern is that Matthews’s southern documentarians are largely men. His discussion of Lyon’s SNCC work focuses on leaders such as Bob Moses and John Lewis. But one of Lyon’s most famous photographs portrays teenage women in the Leesburg, Georgia...

审核人：

• 夺取南方：想象美国记录最全的地区，斯科特·马修斯（Scott L. Matthews）
• 卡罗尔·奎克

旅行作家，诗人，民族志学家和其他社会科学家，音乐学家，民俗学家，新闻工作者和摄影师创造了“美国南方”。。。地球上最有据可查的地方”（第2页）。斯科特·马修斯（Scott L. Matthews）对此作品进行了调查。他的历史称号表明，他对[End Page 145]地区丰富的文献研究与其从业者所传达的内容同样感兴趣。对于马修斯来说，纪录片作家的志愿制图通常使“别具一格的原始主义和令人震惊的病理学”黯然失色，因此本书探讨了纪录片作家的动机和神话化现象（第239页）。如果詹姆斯·艾吉（James Agee）声称相机证明“是残酷的光辉”（詹姆斯·艾吉（James Agee）和沃克·埃文斯（Walker Evans），那就让我们赞美名人[Boston，1941年]，第1页。9），马修斯（Matthews）认为，纪录片的目击者常常导致光顾改革的尝试或扭曲的讽刺漫画，而这些讽刺漫画仍然坚持南方。他们共谋维护“现代性”消失之前的“前现代”区域主义，但是马修斯证明了纪录片主题经常如何拒绝这种表述（第2页）。

作者经过深入研究的案例研究跨越了20世纪。从社会科学家霍华德·奥杜姆（Howard W. Odum）在北卡罗来纳大学社会科学研究所的发展开始，马修斯便通过杰克·德拉诺（Jack Delano）的眼光移到乔治亚州一个县的新政时代农场安全管理局（FSA）。在战后时期，《夺取南方：想像美国记载最广的地区》探讨了《新失落的城市漫步者》的音乐学家/音乐家约翰·科恩，他们追踪并推广了阿巴拉契亚歌手的“高寂寞之声”（第113页）。然后，马修斯（Matthews）调查了丹尼·里昂（Danny Lyon）的学生非暴力协调委员会（SNCC）令人回味的照片，最后深入到阿拉巴马州黑尔县，让我们现在赞美名人 设置好了。

马修斯对一系列文献资料的探索是一种优势，这使他能够确定常见的表现形式。他还描述了纪录片项目的受众重叠。例如，奥杜姆（Odum）的工作人员向几个南部社区介绍了摄影师多萝西娅·兰格（Dorothea Lange）。摄影师，学者，政策制定者和一般公众随后都使用了这种图像，这一代后来被民间爱好者，艺术爱好者和政治活动家所拥护。另一个优点是马修斯（Matthews）挖掘了贫穷的南方人对其文件的反应。一位肯塔基州的音乐家开枪打死了一名面试官。大多数受试者发现较少的残酷形式的抵抗。马修斯（Matthews）进行了重要的学术干预，展示了Zora Neale Hurston或WEB Du Bois等精英人士，

半个世纪以来，批评家和学者一直认为摄影师对他们的拍摄对象施加不利的影响。马修斯的分析为其他人仅提供理论的地方提供了证据。但是，由于每一章都表明纪录片作家强迫自己抗拒主题，所以这种论点变成了公式化的。改善主体与制造者之间关系的更大柔韧性将说服更多。同样，占领南方使以南方为主题的各种各样的从业者之间的差异变得平坦。当然，在中心（北部城市）的文献工作者试图在外围（南部农村）保留“地道”的文化。然而，吸引了诸如势利的人，WASPy Walker Evans等各种各样的人。绅士，种族主义者奥杜姆（Odum），南方人；还是犹太布鲁克林派和反种族主义里昂来记录南方？里昂受到他的臣民和活动赞助商SNCC的崇高敬意。最终，SNCC [End Page 146]先进的黑人摄影师，将机芯的激进主义与“黑人力量”并驾齐驱。这似乎没有证明里昂的“善意的白人自由主义”（第187-88页）。最后一个问题是马修斯的南方纪录片作家大部分是男人。他对里昂的SNCC工作的讨论着重于鲍勃·摩西和约翰·刘易斯等领导人。但是里昂最著名的照片之一描绘了佐治亚州里斯堡的少女。