Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten

Product Description
A trailblazer for women photographers in the South, North Carolina’s Bayard Wootten (1875-1959) overcame economic hardship, gender discrimination, and the obscurity of a small-town upbringing to become the state’s most significant early female photographer. This advocate of equality for women combined an artistic vision of photography with determination and a love of adventure to forge a distinguished career spanning half a century.
Originally trained as an artist, Wootten worked in photography’s pictorial tradition, emphasizing artistic effect in her images at a time when realistic and documentary photography increasingly dominated the medium. Traveling throughout North Carolina and surrounding states, she turned the artistry of her eye and lens on the people and places she encountered.
Having opened a studio in her hometown of New Bern in 1905, Wootten moved to Chapel Hill in 1928, where her clients included the University of North Carolina. Between 1932 and 1941, she also provided photographs for six books–including
Cabins in the Laurel,
Old Homes and Gardens of North Carolina, and
Charleston: Azaleas and Old Bricks–lectured extensively, and exhibited her photographs as far away as New York and Massachusetts.

Light and Air features 190 illustrations, including 136 duotone reproductions of Wootten’s photographs taken in North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee–many of which have never before been published. Though she was an accomplished landscape and architectural photographer, some of Wootten’s most notable images were the portraits she crafted of black and white Americans in the lower reaches of society, working people whom other photographers often ignored. These images are perhaps her most enduring legacy.

Review
This absorbing biography of Wootten, North Carolina s most significant early female photographer, should kindle interest in Wootten s remarkable work.
“The Picture Professional””Light and Air” is a beautiful volume, carefully produced. Well researched and illustrated.
“Bloomsbury Review”This book, with 136 duotones, recovers the images of a little known but highly accomplished regional artist.
“Women’s Art Journal”””Light and Air” is a beautiful volume, carefully produced. Well researched and illustrated.
“Bloomsbury Review”””This absorbing biography of Wootten, North CarolinaUs most significant early female photographer, should kindle interest in WoottenUs remarkable work.
“The Picture Professional”””This book, with 136 duotones, recovers the images of a little known but highly accomplished regional artist.
“Women’s Art Journal””A wonderful book.
“Journal of Southern History”This meaningful and balanced book brings the work of this photographer to a place it clearly deserves.
“Choice”
Review
In examining the career of Bayard Wootten, this informative and well-researched work provides much needed information about photography as it was practiced by a professional woman in the American South in the early twentieth century.–Naomi Rosenblum, author of
A History of Women Photographers

From the Back Cover
A study of the life and work of Bayard Wootten, one of the South’s first female photographers. Features 190 illustrations, many of which are portraits of lower-class black and white Americans, people whom other photographers often ignored.
About the Author
Jerry W. Cotten is photographic archivist at the North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina Library at Chapel Hill.