| Popis: |
Pruitt, who regularly attended the First Methodist Church, photographed religious rituals including births, christenings, baptisms, weddings, funerals, and revivals. In the buckle of the Bible Belt, he took pictures of countless church groups, Black and white. He had no reservation about taking pictures of African Americans: “All you had to do was to pay him,” Lula May Williams said in a 1994 interview. She recalled how in 1942, Pruitt photographed her church—the only time Pruitt ever took her picture. She pointed to a panorama on her living room wall. The picture shows a hundred church members in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. This image depicts the installation of a new pastor, Rev. R. M. Prowell, and the officers of the auxiliary groups of Shiloh Missionary Baptist, the oldest Black church in Columbus, founded in 1861. Lula May Williams’s treasuring of the photograph testifies to the power of an image to carry forth the memory of faith and faithfulness. Pruitt took the picture he was paid to take; the subjects of the photograph paid the price he asked and then put on the wall or on a table a framed picture to reinforce their belief in something spiritual, something they considered priceless. |
