What makes Clarence John Laughlin “Southern”
If a person is born in the South, are they Southern? This question has been asked for a while now and it becomes even more important when dealing with art. Is an artist who is born in the South distinctly Southern and an extension of that region? For my study of the South, the states I will define as such are Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Kentucky and most importantly, Louisiana. The reason I choose these are loosely connected to the Confederacy, with the exception of Kentucky. While I did want to include Texas in the list, it became clear that as it was a member of the Confederacy and has regional effects due to the Civil War and era before it, it is indeed in the same category as the other states. Today, the stereotypical Old South resides in the states that I listed and that is where my study lives.
Clarence John Laughlin represents an artist in opposition for the South. For years, the artists that came out of the South were upholding the traditions that were present in the slavery days before the Civil War. Many artists in the South were not given the respect for their art because the liberal mindset of the art world disagreed with the society present. Art Papers published an article in 1981 about what makes Laughlin so special. For the author of the article, Laighlin was able to highlight the South as it was in his time. The images that Laughlin created were bigger than simply still time. He captured history and region in a snapshot that today still tells a story of decades ago. By creating a romantic notion of the South that is in decay, Laughlin puts the discourse on the South in binary opposition with the South itself.
Images such as the one above show Laughlin’s Southern touch at work. The image is representative of Lousisna, where he lived, but also of the South as a whole. The pillars from a masiive plantation remain; however, not only are they in ruin, but the rest of the building is completely demolished. Through images like this Laughlin is telling his story. The South is no longer what history has mad eit out to be. While the structures of the Old South are still traced everywhere, the system is no longer the overarching structure. The foundation has been leveled.
A lot of Laughlin’s work showcases a subject in a landscape with no face, or an object covering their face. These images showcase the identity that is taken away from subjects in their environment. In these images, Laughlin is showcasing that the subject has lost its identity when in the backdrop of its setting, specifically the South. For Laughlin identity is a crucial aspect of subjectivity and relates to the setting, or broad the region. Regarding the South, the Black people of the area during slavery viewed themselves as displaced subjects with a stripped identity and the whites viewed them as commodified objects with no identity to begin with. Later, after the Civil War, Southerners viewed themselves as having fought for “a lost cause” or similar identity crisis that were lost in the war or the rebuilding after. For the Southern people, identity has always been a problem since they were orginially against the mainstream, national culture and that were forced to partake in it, while still trying to stay distinctly “southern.”
For Clarence John Laughlin, the South not only shaped his intellectual artistic ability but also was the backdrop for almost all of his images. By showcasing the loss of identity as well as the decay of the Old South as was told throughout the nation, Laughlin is able to create a distinctly new Southern setting in the backdrop of his photography.
