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Best known for his photograph of the Bird Girl statue in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, GA, which became the cover image for the 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John David “Jack” Leigh II spent his artistic career seeking out and recording the unique personalities, lifestyles, and vernacular environments of the American South.
Capturing moments of peace and leisure enjoyed by African Americans in the natural landscape of the American South, Leigh presents a vision of the black experience typically overlooked by white documentarians and often overshadowed by the history of violence and oppression toward people of color in this region, the ramifications of which continue to plague the nation as a whole. This vision of black contentedness, of comfort in the banal, is one that is uniquely human and uniquely American, and, thus, universal, compelling in its accuracy, and undoubtedly too rare.Label Type
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Jack Leigh (b. 1948-2004)
Boys on the Mill Dam, 1984
gelatin silver print
12.25 x 18 x in.
Gift of Norma Gene Lykes, 2012.1.4
On a large mill dam in Georgia, Jack Leigh captures a lively vision of a 1984 Summer in the South. As if it were a time-lapsed photograph, three boys with mirrored body formations climb and jump from the dam, while two others in the left foreground watch.
Known throughout his career for photographing a range of subjects in his hometown of Savannah, GA, Leigh was inevitably a witness to countless moments of peace and leisure experienced by his African American neighbors—moments that were often overshadowed in the media amidst concurrent violence and oppression.
This work of art is a part of the HCC Permanent Art Collection. The HCC Art Galleries, through their Campus Loan Outreach Program, seek to share original art by collecting a diversity of works for the education and enjoyment of the HCC Community.