Camera Man's Journey: Julian Dimock's South

A poignant collection of 150 photographs, Camera Man's Journey takes us to a place at once familiar and foreign. Set in the South early in the twentieth century, these photographs bridge a distance not only of time but also of contrasting attitudes and customs.

The images show African Americans in or around Columbia, Beaufort, and Hilton Head, South Carolina. Some photographs were taken in surroundings where blacks might associate with whites--out of necessity and according to strict custom. Most of the images, however, are set in "colored sections" or other remote areas of town and country where blacks were obliged to fashion lives apart. Under segregation and disenfranchisement, men, women, and children are portrayed in ordinary occupations and pursuits: a peddler selling his wares, a woman tying a toddler's shoes, a barber and his young apprentice taking a break outside their shop.

Julian Dimock, whose works appeared often in major travel and nature magazines, took the photographs in 1904-5. So many photographers of the era tended to romanticize or politicize their African American subjects; Dimock was different. Signs of want and inequity are plain to see in these images, but Dimock portrays his subjects as they really were in all of their dignity, strength, and beauty.

Dimock made beautiful portraits of African Americans in the post- Civil War South that show at once the incredible dignity and profound poverty of his subjects. The catalog contains full-page high quality reproductions of 155 of Dimock's photos. Two essays provide a biography of Dimock and description of the lives of African Americans in South Carolina in the time depicted. Annotation c. Book News, Inc.,Portland, OR

State Columbia

A breathtaking trove . . . The photographs have been astonishingly preserved and handsomely published in this most attractive volume that does great honor to the publisher, the editors and, above all, to the photographer and his subjects.

Julian Dimock (1873-1945) was born in New Jersey and traveled widely across the United States, taking photographs on his own and as part of many scientific and sporting expeditions. Dimock abruptly ended his photography career in 1917 upon the death of his father, who, as a writer, was also his frequent traveling companion and collaborator. Dimock went on to become a highly regarded orchardist and exponent of conservation. Thomas L. Johnson has been a field archivist associated for more than twenty-five years with the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. His 1986 book, A True Likeness, coedited with Phillip C. Dunn, won a coveted Lillian Smith Award from the Southern Regional Council. Nina J. Root is Director Emerita of the Research Library at the American Museum of Natural History, where, among many other accomplishments, she cataloged the Julian Dimock photograph collection.