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LEWIS WATTS
"SOUTH TO WEST OAKLAND"
April 5 - June 30, 1999
Contact Sheet 101
The photographs that Lewis Watts made in southern parts
of the United States and in West Oakland, California
are engaging for what they contain and for what they
are missing. His intent to record and describe the impact
and evidence of African Americans in and on the places
they inhabit, led him to African-style graves in South
Carolina, aged and faded murals on Beale Street in Memphis,
and to a busy barber shop in West Oakland, California.
There is a timeless quality to many of Lewis Watts'
photographs as they seem caught somewhere in a cycle
of history. Some look like he was peering over the shoulder
or around the corner from Walker Evans, others recall
Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, and Roy DeCarava, and
others perhaps even Clarence John Laughlin. But within
the tradition of documentary photography Watts has decided
to concentrate on the details that define the meaning
of journey and the signposts that survive after the
parade has gone by.
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