Overview
One afternoon in the fall of 1979 photographer Vaughn Sills set out from Athens, Georgia, with a load of camera equipment, a tape recorder, and a caring spirit, seeking a family in a setting that would “call” to her. Running across a settlement of simple frame houses “that seemed to belong” on a country road near town, Sills parked her truck, walked in unannounced, and commenced a twenty-year collaboration with the extended Toole clan that One Family so lovingly documents.
From the thousands of images taken over the years on their front porches and in their homes and yards, Sills has selected 143 portraits documenting the daily lives of four generations of this large southern family and combined them with interviews, correspondence, and the heartfelt poems of Tina Toole Truelove. The resulting book is an artful mix of vivid images richly contextualized by Sills’s own passionately held cultural and artistic values. One Family captures the essence, the individuality, and the mystery of this vital extended family in today’s rural South.
Synopsis
One afternoon in the fall of 1979 photographer Vaughn Sills set out from Athens, Georgia, with a load of camera equipment, a tape recorder, and a caring spirit, seeking a family in a setting that would “call” to her. Running across a settlement of simple frame houses “that seemed to belong” on a country road near town, Sills parked her truck, walked in unannounced, and commenced a twenty-year collaboration with the extended Toole clan that One Family so lovingly documents.
From the thousands of images taken over the years on their front porches and in their homes and yards, Sills has selected 143 portraits documenting the daily lives of four generations of this large southern family and combined them with interviews, correspondence, and the heartfelt poems of Tina Toole Truelove. The resulting book is an artful mix of vivid images richly contextualized by Sills’s own passionately held cultural and artistic values. One Family captures the essence, the individuality, and the mystery of this vital extended family in today’s rural South.
Library Journal
Arriving unannounced at the Toole family's home in Bogart, GA, in 1979, Sills (who teaches photography at Simmons College) proceeded to spend 20 years photographing four generations of the family. She intended her series of portraits to provide a deeper understanding of the human situation. Fortunately, the members of this large, close-knit, caring family trusted her and participated willingly in her project. These 143 black-and-white images, chosen by Sills from the thousands she took, show the Tooles coping with their impoverished existence in dilapidated homes, porches, and yards. The photographs, mainly taken with a Polaroid camera, are accompanied by the subjects' own tape-recorded comments, including one family member's intimate thoughts expressed in touchingly simple poetry. In her introductory essay, Sills acknowledges the impact of James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men on her work. Her book is an honest portrayal of daily life in the present-day rural South, seen through the life of a single family. A foreword by Robert Coles is included. Recommended for public libraries. Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.