Picturing the flag in the New South. (17th February 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Long, Mark
• Is Part Of: Landscape research. Volume 46:Number 2(2021)
• Page Start: 226
• Page End: 245
• Publication Date: 2021-02-17
• Subjects: Flag -- New South -- Confederacy -- fine art photography -- cultural landscape -- political identity; Landscape -- Periodicals; Land use -- Planning -- Periodicals; 719.05
• DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2020.1841743
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0142-6397

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This study draws on several thousand images submitted by 56 fine art photographers for the largest exhibition of photographs about the American South yet undertaken, Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South, to investigate the cultural landscape of the region in the early twenty-first century. The prevalence of the flags of the Confederacy in cultural landscapes in the South highlights the endurance of longstanding white political identities there. More telling, however, is the understated power of the Stars and Stripes, often so taken for granted as to be almost invisible in photographs of the region. Fine art photographs open a window onto the cultural landscape of the New South that showcases charged political identities in the region while underlining the salience of Americanness there.