Andrea Day’s photographs at Mad Art Nov. 3
By Chris King
Of the St. Louis American
When Andrea Day first showed her portfolio to our award-winning photojournalist, Wiley Price, Wiley was impressed by her ability to photograph black people. Technically, it is a challenge to capture the play of light on the complexities of black complexions, and many photographers never develop the craft.
With the technical challenges mastered, she had certain artistic advantages in shooting black people as a white (in fact, Jewish) photographer, according to Wiley.
“You get good work when you shoot outside your own culture,” Wiley said. “There’s a fascination there that drives you.”
I had to smile. I had crossed America with Andrea (or Dre, as friends and colleagues call her). There certainly is a fascination there that drives her, and it often drove her deep into the lives and souls of black folks.
Here in St. Louis, in addition to the historian and singer of spirituals Sister Ann Pittman, Dre and her camera delved deep into a political refugee community from Nigeria, members of a tiny minority tribe named the Ogoni.
Initially, about a dozen Ogoni were relocated to St. Louis after receiving political asylum in the U.S. They were on a death list back home due to their courageous protests against Shell Oil, which had polluted Ogoni, and the then-military government of Nigeria, which viciously repressed the minority tribe.
Once safely sheltered in St. Louis, they resumed their protests, in this case at local Shell stations. Dre and I joined them and documented their struggle as well as their personal lives, which became increasingly intertwined with our own.
I eventually came to live with the younger Ogoni guys and spent countless hours in their company as a roommate and brother, yet almost 10 years later I find that most of my memories of those amazing times are in fact memories of Dre’s photos. Her work was that definitive.
The documentary group Dre and I had helped to form, Hoobellatoo, operates according to a value we call “rum in the workshop,” which places a premium on play in the execution of work. So, even as we protested on behalf of refugees whose families were living under threat of death, we took time to travel down south to Mississippi during country picnic season. In so doing we became intimate with two of the hill country’s legendary figures who are no longer with us, the fife maker and player Otha Turner and the bluesman R.L. Burnside.
These men were the subjects of many musical pilgrimages and many documentary efforts. They were often photographed, but Dre captured Otha as intimately as anyone did. She captured him up and working at “first good light,” making cane fifes over a charcoal fire and feeding his horses with the tough, bitter love of a man who grew up a sharecropper and survived a time in the South as terrifying for black people as what the Ogoni had survived.
Over the course of many visits we went local in the hill country, especially in Senatobia, Otha’s hometown. Dre’s best work in Mississippi was shot far from the roots music circuit. We befriended a young man with the nickname of Soup Bone, a long-distance trucker who lived with his extended family in a double-wide trailer way down a county two-lane. The life in and around the home of his mama, Boot, which doubled as a barbershop for Soup Bone’s hustling little brother Doc, were the best treasures we brought back from Mississippi.
The public is about to get its first glimpse of the many photographic treasures Dre brought back from the road.
Next Thursday, November 3, selections from Andrea Day’s work will be on display at Mad Art Gallery, 1227 So. 12th St. in Soulard, as part of the Hoobellatoo: Crossing America multimedia event (which will also feature a performance of a “spoken word folk symphony” and jail cell memorials to four departed creative forces who had worked with the project).
Doors are at 7 p.m. and the live performance at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 at the door and include two free drinks from sponsors Schlafly Beer and O’Fallon Brewing and free food from Bastante, Duff’s and Senor Pique. For information, email brodog@hoobellatoo.org.
