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Going Over Home by Fred Woodward

By Peggy Roalf   Thursday May 22, 2008

When Fred Woodward was art director of Texas Monthly the task of supplying photographs for articles sometimes fell into his hands. Shortly before he moved to New York to become the AD of Rolling Stone, he was commissioned by The Atlantic Monthly to accompany a friend, who was a journalist, on a freelance photo assignment. The pictures he made in Canton, Mississippi and Chicago, Illinois in 1986 are now on view at 401 Projects.

In an email exchange this week, Fred (who is now design director of GQ) shared with me his artist's statement from the show, which explains the origins of the photographs and how they came to have such meaning for him.

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Two photographs by Fred Woodward from the series, "Going Over Home," 1986.

"I took these pictures for Nicholas Lemann's ‘The Origins of the Underclass,' an article that ran in two parts in The Atlantic Monthly. Nick started his reporting in the Robert Taylor public housing project on the South Side of Chicago - at one time, the largest of its kind in America, and home to 27,000 people.

"During the course of his interviews, he was intrigued to meet so many residents who had all come north from Canton, a small town in Mississippi. He then decided to make the trip there to find out why they'd left. The northerly migration of these African-American southerners became the core of his story and the basis for my photos. The Atlantic ended up running a handful of the photographs; then I filed the negatives away and rarely looked at them again.

"I had been planning for the better part of a year to do a completely different show at 401 Projects - my first photography exhibition - but a few weeks ago, I changed my mind. Driving home one night, I was listening to a discussion on the radio about Barack Obama and religion when I heard it said that maybe part of the problem was simply that most people in this country had never been inside an African-American church.

"When I got home, I pulled out these pictures and found myself looking at contact sheets of the Palm Sunday service I attended at the Greater Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church on my last day in Chicago back in 1986. I had met the pastor, Reverend J. B. Simms, as I was photographing outside his church and he invited me in to, as he said, 'hear the good news.'

"I had never witnessed anything like it. Microphones, electric guitars, drums - serious volume. People were dancing in the aisles overcome with the spirit. Nurses dressed in starched white cotton were on duty to help ease them back gently into this world. Reverend Simms was the single most charismatic person I have ever met.

"As I was saying my good-byes, I told Reverend Simms that if the preacher from my growing-up days had even once made me feel the way I felt at that moment, I'd still be going to church. It was my best compliment, but he was none too happy with my backsliding ways."

Going Over Home: Photographs by Fred Woodward, is on view through July 13th at 401 Projects, 401 West Street, New York, New York, NY 10014. Open Wednesday - Sunday, noon to 6:00 pm. 212.633.6202.


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