In November 2017, almost a year into Trump’s presidency, Berlin-based Scottish photographer Robbie Lawrence and northern-born African-American writer Sala Patterson ventured together to the Low Country—“the coastal region straddling Georgia and South Carolina near where the Ogeechee River meets the ocean”—with the aim of documenting what Patterson describes as “the nuances of issues driving news cycles and political divisions through the lens of one place in America.”
The pair had been introduced by a producer with whom they’d both been working, who felt that they would make an interesting collaborative match, Lawrence tells SLEEK—and she was right. “We were both really interested in capturing a domestic portrayal of southern America at the time of the Trump election to try and provide a less bipolar reaction to the state of the country in terms of how the media was portraying it,” he expands. The photographer and writer traversed the Low Country for three weeks, meeting locals and spending time with them—in their homes, at work, in nature, at church— so as to piece together “a series of vignettes of insights into people’s lives,” Lawrence explains. The result is an arresting, beautifully realised photo book, containing an essay by Patterson at its centre (which Lawrence terms “the book’s spine”) and titled Blackwater River, the colloquial term for the region.
Lawrence and Patterson opted to hone in on this swamp-punctuated terrain for various reasons. “We were interested in the enigma of the south generally, and that area specifically was suffering from a number of issues that we wanted to explore,” says Lawrence. These include the “industrial pollution, climate change, lax environmental law enforcement and rampant development” affecting the region, as Patterson explains in her essay, as well as the “surge in violent, mostly gun-based crime, often involving young black men,” which peaked in 2015, but remains a problem to this day owing to what locals describe as “poor public education, gangs, lack of economic opportunity, absent parents, gentrification, and pervasive, systemic racism.”
While it may sound like the collaborators were going into the project with a specific goal in mind in terms of what they wanted to convey, they were determined to allow for a more abstract interpretation of their experiences. “It was a loosely macro journalistic project; we weren’t trying to be too didactic or narrative led,” Lawrence says. It’s an approach that shines through. The pair were told horror stories about the effects of climate change on the Blackwater River communities—“shrimpers and fishermen told us that their stocks had disappeared, that the coastline was vanishing, that the river was empty of life,” Lawrence says—and met parents who had lost their sons to gun violence. They saw Confederate flags on bumper stickers and listened to pro-gun pioneers describe how the right to bear arms remains a necessity in spite of the number of fatalities it leads to. But these experiences and encounters are never explicitly conveyed.
The book’s photographs range from captivating pictures of dimly lit forestscapes and lush swamp flora, which reveal Lawrence’s mastery of colour and lighting, to what publisher Gregory Stanley terms “anti-portraits”—mysterious images depicting their subjects in a partially obscured manner, whether shrouded by darkness, reduced by the photograph’s crop or hidden by their own away-facing stance. Lawrence hints at the effects of gun violence without giving way to drama or sensationalism—a teenage boy stands in church, hands clasped, head hung, his mournful stance open to interpretation. Similarly, he alludes to the pervading sense of decay in the region not by showing empty fishing nets or ruined coastlines but by capturing quieter moments like a sodden pile of fallen leaves or an abandoned house in a state of dilapidation. “The book is quite reflective, there’s a stillness to the images,” the photographer confirms. “Quite mundane subjects or moments become elevated by their inclusion in the wider series. Including some of the more dramatic elements we experienced would have broken that pattern or feeling.”
Patterson’s essay similarly allows the duo’s subjects to speak for themselves—quite literally through the inclusion of interviews with a cross-section of the characters they met—while leaving room for readers to connect certain dots independently. “Like our investigation, these landscapes and portraits yield an impression rather than a deep understanding of the place,” the writer says shrewdly. “Each moment is individually significant while collectively hinting at larger, more elusive truths.” The result is a truly special project that is as poignant as it is poetic.
Blackwater River is published by Stanley/Barker and is available now.
Images courtesy of Stanley/Barker.