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.
West Oakland, 1993