Capturing Black Culture on Film
By Bill Nichols - 1982
Roland
Freeman is driven by dreams that can hide in the guise of demons.
Just watch
him as he talks. He coils and uncoils in his chair, tenses his body or tosses
back his head in a horselaugh, all depending on the mood of the moment, as a
stream of ideas flow forth, racking his body like the pains of labor.
He's a man
driven by a vision of history.
Southern
Roads/City Pavements, the exhibit of this acclaimed photographer's work on
display at the Old Capitol Museum, offers a major clue toward understanding
Freeman's artistic obsession. It's the latest compilation of work from an
artist/documentarian who intends nothing less than crystallizing the black
experience within a lens frame before it is buried like a relic of a lost
civilization.
That dream
pushes this young black photographer all over the world in search of black
culture. Southern Roads/City Pavements pairs pictures shot in 13 counties in
southwest Mississippi with photos of urban New York, Baltimore and Chicago,
and Freeman is certain of the similarities, the shared tradition, even of the
most dissimilar places.
He's
developed an eye for the black soul. But it wasn't always that way.
Freeman was
born some 44 years ago in Baltimore in the midst of the Depression and lived
the street life to the fullest until he was 13, when he was sent to live on a
Maryland tobacco farm. It was there he learned the love for the land that is so
evident in his pictures of rural farmers.
He grew up
some more, joined the Air Force, won a Brownie camera in a crap game and became
interested in a growing American civil rights movement. One march led to
another until Aug. 28, 1963.
The march on
Washington occurred that day and would forever more change Freeman's life.
"I was
so choked up watching that march that I knew I wanted to say something,"
Freeman said. Photography quickly revealed itself as his voice.
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The Poor People's Campaign March |
"Most
people starting photography don't know what they want to say," Freeman
said, reminiscing about his start. "I knew from the beginning." He
studied the work of Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava, tried and experimented for
about five years and in 1968 found himself documenting the Poor People's Campaign
march from Marks to Washington, D.C.
The Farm
Security Administration documentaries from the Depression fascinated this young
artist. "I thought to myself, `If white people were hurting this much,
hell, what were the black folks doing?' "Freeman said.
He went on
to work for Life Magazine, string for the prestigious Magnum photographic service
in Washington and generally become "a pretty hotshot Washington
photographer," in Freeman's words.
Yet his real
vocation had yet to begin. He always had been fascinated by black traditions in
Baltimore, and began photographing street scenes during off-hours. "I
didn't even realize what I was doing was folklore," he said as he laughed
about his beginnings in the documentary trade.
The
Smithsonian Institution knew better. In 1972, Freeman was asked to contribute
pictures to the Smithsonian's yearly folklore festival. That association led
him to a job in 1974, shooting pictures in Mississippi for the 1974 festival,
and finally his own project in 1975, called the Mississippi Folklife project,
which Freeman worked on with folklorist Worth Long, a man Freeman calls a
brother, "one of those elusive geniuses."
All of which
led Freeman down the path to Southern Roads/City Pavements, an extension of
the work he began with Long in 1975. The exhibit opened in the New York
international Center of Photography before coming to Jackson and New York Times
photo critic Gene Thornton described his work as going, "beyond reportage
to express something that is universal and lasting."
That pleased
Freeman immensely, but the drive goes on. Much remains to be done. After all,
this is a man who describes his creative process as "working on raw guts.
I work on a lot of nervous, mad energy."
He wants to
catalog a black heritage he is intensely proud of, a tradition he maintains
exists in spite of the black migration from the South to the economic opportunities
of the city.
A city boy
by birth, Freemen loves the simplicity and honesty of farm people and that love
shines forth in his work.
"What
some people call hick is hipper than the people who think they're hip," he
said.

Southern
Roads/City Pavements will remain at the Old Capitol Museum until March 14, but
Roland Freeman's work will go on the rest of his life. Commercial assignments,
for clients like the World Bank, pay his bills, and his documentary work keeps
the energy flowing.
Freeman
leaves you certain of his belief in his art. His eyes glaze, the hands swirl in
an inadequate attempt to describe what only a photographer's eye can conjure.
The demons
subside, the dreams are given form, molded with the press of a finger, the
quiet click of a tiny shutter.
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