One Family
Artist's Statement
While traveling in Georgia nearly twenty-five years ago, I stopped at a small mill worker’s house to photograph two children who were playing in the front yard. Soon their mother, Lois, came out and joined in the picture-making; on that day and the next, I photographed them and one older sister who later arrived; and ever since, I have been photographing this family, including Lois, her husband Joel, their seven children, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. As I returned almost every year, bringing pictures and making more, the Tooles came to accept me as part of their lives, and I came to know much of the family history.
Lois and Johnny Joel married young: she was 16; he, 19. Joel's father, a tenant farmer, fathered 22 children by three wives (each named Mattie!). Shortly after his mother's death, seven-year-old Joel quit school to plow and seed and harvest for his father. Lois, whose father was also a tenant farmer, was one of seven children (three of whom died in infancy) born to Wylie and Ruby Chambers, who were uncle and niece to each other. The family blames Lois's emotional instability, a condition shared by two of her three surviving siblings, on her parents' blood relationship. Whatever the cause, Lois's manic-depression manifested itself intermittently in episodes of rambling, angry verbal abuse physical violence – that was never actually effective -- toward her husband and children. But out of fear that Lois would be taken away from them, her family didn't seek medical or psychiatric help for many years, when they became afraid she might seriously hurt someone.
Together Joel and Lois had nine children, two of whom died quite young. In the years that I have been photographing the family, the children have grown up, marriages have taken place and broken up, grandchildren have been born. Joel, an alcoholic, died in 1988 of emphysema brought on by smoking and by breathing poisonous fumes while working as a carpenter; and Lois who had developed diabetes and survived a bout with cancer died in 1999 from heart failure. Lois and Joel moved four or five times during the years I knew them, twice because their homes were condemned, another time, to get out of a trailer park. Their adult children have lived in mobile homes or small houses when they could afford it, or moved in with each other when they couldn't. A sure sign that their lives are better today than when they were children is that Jerry, Lynn and Tina and Joe each own their own home -- Tina and Joe’s are new mobile houses and Jerry recently built a home for himself and his wife. All three sons work as masons, managing their own businesses; Lynn is a home health care worker, Tina runs a paper hanging business; Mary has held a steady job in a convenience store for several years; Alice has become an evangelical preacher. Life is still a struggle in several ways -- in ways that are due in part to a difficult history and to financial constraints, as well as those that result from class prejudices against them.
But I see, just as clearly, the strength the Tooles have -- a strength that I think derives from family. The bond that ties each family member to the others can be witnessed as they gather on the front porch to talk and laugh, to have a good time together, to sing gospel music, to relax after a hard day of physical work. Children ride their bikes close by, then stop to play with a puppy, drink Kool-Aid, check on what's happening among the adults. The newest baby is cuddled and handed ‘round for all to enjoy.The love is as palpable as the struggle to survive. The Tooles, who were once looked down upon by many, are loved immoderately by each other, and I believe it is this that enables them to keep going from day to day and year to year.
This exhibition is partially sponsored by the Polaroid Corporation.