Excerpts from The Hidden South
Ela
BW: What was the best day of your life?
Ela: The day my son was born.
BW: How old is he now?
Ela: 12. He lives with my parents cause I'm so (messed) up.
Theresa
BW: What happened with your son?
Theresa: Well, that one's kinda hard *tears*
My son called me up. I’d been wantin’ to get out from down here. He wanted me in his life. He wanted to get a place together so I said, OK son, we’ll do this. And, we did. We went to Fernandina Beach. We was in a beach house. Then we moved to Jacksonville, right there on the Saint John’s river. Well, me and him had a little disagreement because he didn’t realize what kind of trouble I could get into for underage drinking. I could handle him drinking but not the other kids cause I’m not going to prison like that. After that, I come up here [to Atlanta] … my son had went to a bar and met somebody and the man murdered my kid.
Mohawk
BW: If you died tomorrow, what would you want on your tombstone? What would you want to be remembered for?
Mohawk: Huh. Can't believe you asked that. I just got told that I have lung cancer.
BW: Man, I'm sorry. Can they do anything?
Mohawk: I could try chemo but I decided not to.
BW: They tell you how long?
Mohawk: 4 months.
BW: When did you find out?
Mohawk: A month ago. To answer your original question, I won't have a tombstone. I will most likely walk out into a field and die.
Rambo
Rambo: In 1996 a bullet came through the living room window and killed my mama dead. I found her. It made my mind different. My aunt died 10 years ago and you're looking at the last person in my family. I ain't got nobody.
Me: That's tough. How long have you been outdoors?
Rambo: I been in the bat cave about 10 years. That's 10 years of summers and winters out here. That's why they call me Rambo, cause I can survive. People ask me. "Rambo, how you make it?" and I say, "with Jesus in your heart, you can survive anything."
Brent Walker didn’t initially set out to tell other people’s stories.
It wasn’t until he was laid off from a job as the interactive creative director at Suntrust Bank that he started picking up a camera and taking pictures. He forged a day job as a portrait photographer, but a project started brewing in the back of his mind.
The plan was to set off on trips from his home in Newnan to the Georgia mountains and Asheville, N.C., to photograph people, often strangers, and get them talking about their lives.
He was nervous at first. “I couldn’t make myself get over that hump, so to speak,” he said.
But the more photos he shot, the more comfortable he became talking to people. That was when he realized that the stories he was hearing were ones that weren’t being told; they began and ended with the teller.
He decided to change that. Last September he launched "The Hidden South," an online photo journal that showcases portraits and stories of the downtrodden of Georgia.
“I try to find people who don’t have a voice,” Walker said. “I try to tell their story, where they might never have a platform to tell their story.”
Inspired by storytelling projects such as NPR’s StoryCorps and the anonymous secret submission site PostSecret, Walker was also motivated by his own past struggles with addiction and other demons.
“I had some stuff happen to me when I was a child, and I carried around those secrets with me until I was in my 30s, and it affected my life greatly,” Walker said. “I’m of the belief that secrets can kill people. I think it’s always best to be honest.”
Walker visits neighborhoods around Atlanta and beyond, looking for people who he thinks will be open to sharing their stories. And there are plenty of stories to share, from Ela, a young mother who struggled with how her heroin addiction was affecting her 12-year-old son, to Mohawk, a man who was recently told he only had four months to live.
He’s gotten over his initial reluctance to talk to people by using a couple of standard questions as conversation starters, and things tend to grow organically from there.
“What I’m hoping is that they will start talking and I can get out of the way as much as possible and just let them tell their story,” Walker said.
He’s bumped into a couple of scary situations — one woman got into his car and wouldn’t get out, and a pimp threatened him for trying to talk to a prostitute — but on the whole, Walker said, most people he meets are just happy to have someone to listen.
“Some people, it’s as if they’ve been waiting all their lives for you to come along just so they can tell their story, so it just pours out when they find out what I’m doing,” he said.
What started out as an interest in exploring a hidden community has turned into a passion project, and, Walker hopes, a full-time venture in 2015. A Kickstarter set to launch in February will raise money for Walker to travel to areas outside of Atlanta including New Orleans and the Appalachian Mountains. He also plans to turn The Hidden South into a series of books and hopes to expand the project’s scope by speaking to prisoners.
Walker also uses the site to solicit donations for some of the communities he features.
“I feel like if I’m going to present the problem, I should at least try to be part of the solution.”
