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The haunting images of Bayard Wootten (1875 � 1959), one of the American South�s earliest woman photographers, are on display this winter at the Asheville Art Museum, now through February 8, 2004. These photographs of people and places, primarily from the 1930s and 1940s, beautifully evoke the rural Appalachia of the past. The exhibition includes photographs used to illustrate one of the best loved chronicles of Western North Carolina, Olive Tilford Dargan�s �From My Highest Hill: Carolina Mountain Folks,� originally published in 1925, and reissued in 1941 in an illustrated edition with Wootten�s specially commissioned photos. Wootten, who traveled extensively throughout the Carolinas, was able to capture unforgettable portraits of local populations. Her images of log cabins huddled in laurel and rhododendron present a poignant view to the contemporary eye of mountain landscapes that have long since been replaced by paved roads and golf courses. Wootten�s work is firmly based in the turn of the century tradition of Pictoralist photography. Pictoralism, an attempt to make photography closer to painting, is characterized by careful composition, the use of exotic photographic papers, manipulation of the negative, and other techniques which produced soft focused, haunting, painterly images. Grounded in artistic tradition and originally trained as a painter, Wootten�s work pays close attention to the classic elements of art. These photographs are as arresting and luminous as oil paintings. Born in New Bern, NC, Bayard Wootten attended school in Greensboro. She began her career as a painter and then a teacher. After turning to photography, she became increasingly successful, and was firmly established as a well-known photographer by the time of her move to Chapel Hill in 1928. Noted for her intrepid traveling style, Wootten was one of the first North Carolina women to fly in a plane, and was the first person to take aerial photographs of North Carolina. Wootten�s cousin, Lucy Morgan, was influential in the founding of Penland School of Crafts, and Wootten began her many travels through Western North Carolina with a visit to Penland in 1928. Many of the original Penland artists and teachers sat for Wootten portraits. Wootten is best known for her work in the 1930s, during which time she provided photographs for six books, most notably �Cabins in the Laurel,� �Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina,� and �Charleston: Azaleas and Old Bricks.� As well as continuing her photographic career, Wootten became a popular lecturer and was well known on the national lecture circuit right up until her death in Chapel Hill at the age of 84. This exhibition, drawn from the archives of the North Carolina Room at the Wilson Library at UNC Chapel Hill, and from the North Carolina Collection at the Pack Library in Asheville, focuses on her images of Western North Carolina. There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Sunday, November 9, from 2-4 PM. Curator Frank Thomson will give a lunchtime gallery talk about Bayard Wootten on Friday, November 21, at 12:30 PM. A special lecture by Jerry W. Cotton, author of �Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten,� will be held on Sunday, January 11, 2004, at 2 PM; all programs are free with Museum admission. A Certain Quality of Vision: The Photographs of Bayard Wootten is in the Museum�s first floor Holden Community Gallery, which is always free to all Museum visitors. The Asheville Art Museum is open 10AM-5PM, Tuesday through Saturday and 1-5PM on Sunday. The Museum is open every Friday until 8:00 PM. Special docent-guided tour packages are available for groups and students. The Museum is located in the Pack Place Education, Arts and Science Center, 2 South Pack Square, in downtown Asheville. Admission to the Museum is $6.00 for adults and $5.00 for seniors, students with ID and for children 4-15 (children age three and younger are admitted free). Members are admitted free to the Museum. (Photo by Bayard Wootten)
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