A trailblazer for women photographers in the South, North
Carolina's Bayard Wootten (1875-1959) overcame economic hardship,
gender discrimination, and the obscurity of a small-town upbringing
to become the state's most significant early female photographer.
This advocate of equality for women combined an artistic vision of
photography with determination and a love of adventure to forge a
distinguished career spanning half a century.
Originally trained as an artist, Wootten worked in photography's
pictorial tradition, emphasizing artistic effect in her images at a
time when realistic and documentary photography increasingly
dominated the medium. Traveling throughout North Carolina and
surrounding states, she turned the artistry of her eye and lens on
the people and places she encountered.
Having opened a studio in her hometown of New Bern in 1905, Wootten
moved to Chapel Hill in 1928, where her clients included the
University of North Carolina. Between 1932 and 1941, she also
provided photographs for six books--including
Cabins in the
Laurel,
Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina, and
Charleston: Azaleas and Old Bricks--lectured extensively,
and exhibited her photographs as far away as New York and
Massachusetts.
Light and Air features 190 illustrations, including 136
duotone reproductions of Wootten's photographs taken in North
Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee--many of which
have never before been published. Though she was an accomplished
landscape and architectural photographer, some of Wootten's most
notable images were the portraits she crafted of black and white
Americans in the lower reaches of society, working people whom
other photographers often ignored. These images are perhaps her
most enduring legacy.