Description: "In his expansive history of documentary work in the South during the twentieth-century, Scott L. Matthews examines the motivations and methodologies of several pivotal documentarians, including sociologist Howard Odum, photographers Jack Delano and Danny Lyon, and music ethnographer John Cohen. Their work salvaged and celebrated folk cultures threatened by modernization or strived to reveal and reform problems linked to [the] region's racial caste system and exploitative agricultural economy"--
Brief description: Scott L. Matthews is assistant professor of history at Florida State College at Jacksonville.
Review Quotes: "At its core, Matthews' Capturing the South speaks to the asymmetries of documentary power around histories of well-meaning (often self-serving) intentions, cultural exploitation, and subject resistance. . . . Meticulously researched and thoughtfully considered. . . . The energy of Matthews' argument establishes the ethical ambitions of his study in ways that persuasively invite the reader into a consideration about the historical arc and the ï¬\x81eldwork ethics that arguably render the South the most documented American region."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History