Extra Ordinary: Everyday Buildings in the American South
For photographers Steve Gross and Susan Daley, the humblest buildings exert a powerful pull. This pair of veteran architectural photographers has been documenting historic places for over 25 years, and over that time they've snapped hundreds of images of simple rural structures along American highways and byways, especially in the South. Some of these buildings have outlived their use and been left to slowly decay into the landscape. Others are already gone, or are serving new purposes while their very existence honors the past.
The Mary Jenkins Community Praise House, built around 1900, still stands on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.
The Smile Inn, a former roadhouse and gas station in Des Allemands, Louisiana, photographed in the late 1990s.
In 2011, more than a decade after this photo was taken, this Dundee, Mississippi, train depot was moved to Tunica Resorts, Mississippi.
An anonymous building in central Louisiana features decorative woodwork and siding.
Blues harmonica legend Sonny Boy Williamson II was buried next to this now-gone church near Tutweiler, Mississippi.
Joyce's Barber Shop in Attalla, Alabama, was still in business as of December 2013, when this photo was taken.
The brick facade of the abandoned Welch General Store off the Selma-Montgomery Road in Alabama’s Dallas County is beginning to be overgrown by trees.
"The places we come across and choose to photograph go unnoticed by some, but to many they are potent landmarks of local history and give rise to rich personal memories," says Daley. "They are human and intimate in their scale. They appeal because of their familiar forms that have a sense of character, directness, and certainty about them. We associate them with half-forgotten truths and obscure social rituals and beliefs, as well as lost building practices and ways of doing things."
Gross and Daley's visual record of these evocative, often-mysterious places reminds us that the tradition of vernacular architecture in America still goes a long way toward creating that strong sense of place we all crave.
