The Art - Photography

Portraits of concrete statuary. These photos were taken in 2013. In 2018, again driving through that area of northwest Georgia with my husband and son, we stopped by the statuary farm hoping to find a replacement for a beloved concrete alligator that had rested by our door for nearly twenty years, a guardian figure. It had been broken by workers for the new owner of the apartment building out of which we were gentrified in 2016. During our 2013 visit to the statuary farm we had purchased a replacement for a concrete penguin. In 2018, as we got out of the car, the proprietor emerged with her dog, both looking very much the same though the statuary yard itself appeared long neglected. The woman seeming peculiarly aggressive and hostile, we introduced ourselves. She noted my son and I were carrying cameras, was perhaps also suspect because of our appearance, and asked why we were taking photos, suggesting we had something to do with "people from a newspaper" who come “up there” a few years back to “cause racial trouble. Not that I don’t have anything I’m not proud of,” she said. Which meant she likely carried black lawn jockeys though I hadn't noticed anything of this sort on our former visit. We explained we'd been up there several years beforehand, had made a purchase, were returning hoping to find a replacement figure one of ours that had broken, and that we had nothing to do with a newspaper. The woman still seemed suspicious, was still unwelcoming, but left us to roam. Which, we did, rather than leaving, as my son was anxious for film footage, and only sorry that he wasn't recording when we were confronted. This time, the subject having been brought up, I kept my eye open for figures that might be problematic, but saw nothing, which made the confrontation even weirder. When we'd returned home, I did a search for any news reports on the business and came up with nothing. I'm not intimating that what she'd described hadn't happened, but I rather felt that, in what is a very conservative area of north Georgia, the confrontation was a symptom of Trumpism and an emboldened antagonism against "people who probably aren't like us", whether those differences be cultural, ethnic, racial or political.

Anyway, this gallery is purely for sake of my shot of the army of pigs led by rabbits.