The Pruitt Project

Pruitt Exhibition curator Berkley Hudson was a guest of MPB - Mississippi Public Broadcasting where he talked about the exhibit and companion book and his work to save these photos so they could be viewed by more people. Berkley's interview starts about 2:58 minutes into the broadcast.

Mississippi Edition - 4/7/2022 - O.N. Pruitt's Possum Town with Prof. Berkley Hudson Mississippi Public Broadcasting is MPB. Mississippi is Our Mission.

The Pruitt Possum Town photo exhibit, now on display in Columbus at the Columbus Arts Council, will be leaving the state after April 23rd. This post is to remind those who want to see it that time is short. It is also to advise of three related events taking place in the state over the next week.

Jackson, MS - Lemuria Bookstore - Saturday, April 9, 2 p.m.
Signing Event of Pruitt Project companion hardback book on Pruitt and his photographs, "O.N. Pruitt's Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South" with exhibit curator and book author Berkley Hudson.

Oxford, MS - University of Mississippi’s Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics - Monday, April 11, 5:30 p.m.
Panel — Separate and Sometimes Equal: O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town Photographs of Mississippi Trouble & Resilience.
Overby Center panelist Berkley Hudson, a University of Mississippi graduate and University of Missouri emeritus professor, will detail how a trove of 88,000 negatives was preserved from history’s dustbin to illuminate not only the past, but the present.Hudson will be joined in discussion by photographer Timothy Ivy and novelist Deborah Johnson.
Ivy, a University of Mississippi journalism graduate, is a documentary and editorial portrait photographer based in Oxford, Mississippi. His work focuses on experiences and cultures of everyday people, particularly in the southern United States. His work has appeared in Smithsonian, the New York Times, the Guardian, Washington Post, Veranda, Oxford American, Ebony, and Jet. Johnson is the author of The Air Between Us, which received the Mississippi Library Association Award for fiction. She lives in Columbus, and is working on her next novel. She teaches in Stanford University’s continuing studies online writing program.

Columbus, MS - Mississippi University for Women - April 12, 6 p.m.
Rent Auditorium in Whitfiled Hall on the W campus
Panel - “O.N. Pruitt’s Pictures of Trouble and Resilience: Uncovering Common Ground” will feature a panel of experts reflecting on Pruitt’s photos and their stories — and how the past may provide possible answers, at least for some questions the images prompt.
Panel members include moderator Berkley Hudson, exhibit curator and author of the companion book; Alexa Dilworth and Tom Rankin, both of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University; documentary filmmaker Zaire Love of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi; and William Williams, fine arts professor at Haverford College. The event is free and open to the public.
Photo credit for the Pruitt photos - Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press (January 2022)
Book photo courtesy of Lemuria Booksto

I'm so excited to let ya'll know that this Tuesday, January 18, UNC Press is publishing my new book, O. N. Pruitt's Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South. I appreciate your support during these many decades of work. I'm thrilled that these photos are making their way out into the wider world. Please tell everyone you know.

From 1920 to 1960, O.N. Pruitt, a White photographer in a racially segregated city, recorded the intimacies of daily life in his hometown of Columbus, Mississippi. Pruitt’s remarkable photographs of this small-town community provide a unique window on the Jim Crow American South in a time of change, offering a point of departure for thinking about complex interrelations of community, culture, race, photography, and memory.

Pruitt’s work is distinguished by a seemingly boundless determination to record the customs, traditions, celebrations, joys, and sorrows of his neighbors, with a sensitivity that is rare among commercial photographers of the time. Together, these pictures provide an unparalleled view on a nation in transition, revealing a history that is at once painful and uplifting.

I've set up a Facebook and Instagram account to show a few of the featured photos as well as to let people know about upcoming events - including an exhibit opening in Columbus, MS on February 3rd - where you can see the images in person. Exhibit closes in Columbus April 23, 2022.