Kathryn Tucker Windham
  • Home
  • KATHRYN'S WORK
    • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • BOOKS
    • TELLING STORIES
    • AWARDS
  • Biography
  • VIDEOS
  • OUR STORIES (Blog)
  • Contact Us
  • Purchase Prints
  • NEW 8 x 10 Prints

Memories in Print

11/15/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
When Mother died in 2011, she left us a house full to family treasures in the form of photography.  She also left us libraries of books, many signed by the author, that ranged from Indian lore to the classics.  My brother, Ben, said it was like sifting through the Library of Congress.
 
But it was the trove of photographs that slowed our clearing out work.  Not ones to toss memories aside, Ben and I enjoyed poring over every family picture, recalling what we could remember and wishing we still had someone to ask about others.  It took us well over a year to sort through, lay claim to, and eventually clear out all the sweet fragments of people’s lives from the “archives” at 2004 Royal Street.
 
I now have in my basement bins of pictures and correspondence and other material of interest to probably no one but me.  Somebody else can do the second round of sorting when I’m gone.  
 
But the photographs that everyone seems interested in are those disappearing scenes of the South that my mother made through the years, beginning with her Brownie box camera when she was 12.  The first picture she ever took was of an elderly woman standing at a spinning wheel.  Mother told me her daddy took her out to the country with him not long after she got that camera, and they stopped at the woman’s house to visit.  And Mother took a picture.  
 
She took pictures throughout her travels in the South.  She made photographs of country stores, of clothes hung on fences to dry, of haircuts in a front yard, of old Army veterans.  Her interest in the South’s people and places was insatiable. Her photography was eventually discovered by a friend and expert in the field who encouraged Mother to haul out the negatives and have them professionally printed for exhibition.  Several museums around the Southeast organized shows of her work, and her photographs were printed with accompanying stories in a book called Encounters. 
 
I believe the photograph my mother liked most from her decades of making pictures was one of a woman holding a rooster.  Mother said she saw the woman walking down a country road carrying a rooster.  Mother didn’t get far down the road before it registered with her that she should take that picture, so she turned around.  This is a portion of the way Mother describes the encounter in her book:  
 
She posed with dignity and a fleeting touch of humor, holding the bird against her white shirt to dramatize his bright feathers.  When I asked if I might give her a ride, she declined, saying, “I ain’t got far to go.”  I wish I knew what happened to the rooster.  He appeared to be too young to be consigned to the stew pot.  His colorful plumage (the golds and greens purely sparkled in the sunlight) and his long spurs bespoke game chicken ancestry, so he may have been on his way to a fight.  Or perhaps a happier future awaited him as lord of the new chicken yard.  Whatever his fate, I wish I had a few of his feathers to decorate my own straw hat.  
                 ---Kathryn Tucker Windham

​
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    November 2022
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016

    We welcome YOUR comments on our blog posts. You will see a "comments" link at the top and bottom of each page. Feel free to join in! 

    Want to get alerts when new posts are added to this Blog? Visit and "Like" our Facebook page and you will see the new posts there when they are added!
    Click here to visit the new Kathryn Tucker Windham Facebook Page.

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Photo Courtesy of Ted Tucker

    RSS Feed

Picture
Photo Courtesy of Ted Tucker
"Some people are important to intellectuals, journalists, or politicians, but Kathryn Tucker Windham is probably the only person I know in Alabama who is important to everybody."      

​–
Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University. 
CONTACT US

​Dilcy Windham Hilley
Email:
dilcywindham@gmail.com

© 2023 - Dilcy Windham Hilley.  All rights to images belong to the artists who created them.

Site by Mike McCracken mike@myworkonly.com
Picture
  • Home
  • KATHRYN'S WORK
    • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • BOOKS
    • TELLING STORIES
    • AWARDS
  • Biography
  • VIDEOS
  • OUR STORIES (Blog)
  • Contact Us
  • Purchase Prints
  • NEW 8 x 10 Prints