Emphasizing pride, strength, and humanity in photography of the impoverished
Barnes discusses the emotional impact of the work he did as a photographer for the North Carolina Fund during the 1960s. While acknowledging that the subject matter of his photography had the capacity to evoke depressing thoughts, he focused on his work's ability to humanize poverty by documenting his subjects' strength, pride, and humanity. As elsewhere in the interview, Barnes's comments here reveal the centrality of photography to the tasks of the North Carolina Fund.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Billy E. Barnes, November 6, 2003. Interview O-0038. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
This is more of a delicate question. I was wondering what the emotional
impact is of being a photographer of people in poverty. I mean
I've done some reading and it can be very difficult to, you
know, be a journalist and cover war and dismal conditions. How did you
deal with that?
- BILLY EBERT BARNES:
-
Well, there are several things that may be behind that
question—how did I deal with the notion of imposing myself on
these people and how did I deal with the disturbing sight of the things
I saw.
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
Right. Yeah, I had when I went to the Pulitzer Prize-winning photography
exhibit, it was very difficult to see those different images. One of the
people I went with, too, really couldn't talk about it
afterward. But, yeah, those were the two things I was getting at. You
don't have to answer it.
- BILLY EBERT BARNES:
-
No, I don't mind answering if I can think of an
answer—a true answer. It's been a long time, and,
you know, I don't do that anymore. I don't deal
with the same kind of photography. I guess I dealt with it by
concentrating on the people and not the conditions as much as I could. I
tried to sublimate the conditions to the background, the setting, the
environment, and concentrate on the people and their beauty and their
humanity, their strength. I don't recall ever having been in
a situation where I was trying to make them look pitiful and without
hope. I could always see pride there. Even when I was working at the
shelter, I never saw anyone who didn't have some pride left
and some hope left in the goodness of life and the possibilities of
life. I think it was the same way when I was shooting these pictures.
Many, many of them were dealing with dreadful circumstances and had very
little reason for hope, but I always saw it there. To me, most of the
time, it didn't seem to me like a dismal situation the way
war would. Because it seemed to me that what I was doing was trying to
participate in offering them hope. When you go and cover war and you see
little kids with their legs blown off, you're not bringing
much hope to the situation. You're just working as an
observer. I wasn't working as an observer in the
'60s. I was there for a purpose other than to be a voyeur.
So, I had a different motivation.
There's nothing wrong with being a journalist. I wished many
times that I had concentrated more on straight journalism than on some
of the more commercial aspects of photography like shooting pictures
mostly for textbooks and magazines. But I don't think
I—. I think I very seldom felt devastated. I think I felt
more encouraged and uplifted by my contact with these people.
So, I wouldn't agree with the people you've read or
the people you've been associated with who felt depressed by
it. I usually felt invigorated by the spirit and the beauty I saw in
these people. Like that little old lady in the rocking chair, Miss Mary.
I don't know how you could visit somebody like that without
coming away feeling like you've met somebody really special
that you'll never forget even if you hadn't been
there and photographed her to remind you of her. When these people over
in Durham did that exhibit and I unearthed all these photographs and saw
some of them for the first time in fifteen or twenty years, it was like
visiting old friends. It was like a high school reunion. There they
were. Half of them are probably dead by now. Maybe a third of them. The
older people are dead by now. There they were. They really seemed to me
like old friends. I feel like I know these people. I don't
know their names, but I remember what they were like—how
their voices sounded and so forth. I think that's why there
was such a long silence when you asked me to describe whether I was
depressed or disturbed by what I saw, because I concentrated more on the
people and the spirit and less on their surroundings. It was just window
dressing to me— the environment.
- ELIZABETH GRITTER:
-
Yeah, I noticed when looking through some of negatives of your
photographs in the North Carolina Collection and that was one of the
words that I thought described them—of how every photograph
the person looked dignified and beautiful.
- BILLY EBERT BARNES:
-
Yeah. Yeah. The kid with the washboard, you know. That family
didn't have anything. That beautiful Indian girl with the
washboard behind her and her feet crossed. You just couldn't
want a more beautiful child than that. Her spirit. There was kind of a
fearlessness, you know. She wasn't afraid of me. She was
being herself, and she had as much pride as a kid that age could have at
being herself. So, I couldn't come away from situations like
that depressed. I felt it was great privilege to be in a position to
make her acquaintance, because it's not something I could
have when I was living in Atlanta walked off the street and made her
acquaintance. I had the wherewithal in terms of an intermediary go to
that home, go into that home, and talk with those people and shoot
pictures of them and their children. It was just a great privilege to
me. It was one of the most uplifting times of my whole life.