Atlanta photographer probes mill community's soul

PHOTO GALLERY Click to see the exhibit   Catledge, who is visually impaired, has 50,000 black-and-white negatives from two decades of photographing Cabbagetown

In this story: Tough people, tough times Focusing on the eyes Snowballs in the freezer 'Great deal of sadness' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Debra Krajnak
CNN.com Arts & Style editor

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Look into the eyes of the faces Oraien Catledge photographed for 20 years and you'll see the hardship and pride of generations.

In Cabbagetown, just southeast of downtown Atlanta, they call him the "picture man."

The new face of Cabbagetown   ALSO Lofts spin new life for Atlanta cotton mill   AUDIO Cabbagetown native Joyce Brookshire ... reminisces about the neighbors who have moved away 256K WAV sound ... describes her admiration for Oraien Catledge 448K WAV sound "... sings the "Cabbagetown Ballad" (1977)" 4.8 MB MP3 640K WAV sound   PHOTO GALLERY Click to see the exhibit

Catledge, who was raised in rural Mississippi, was irresistibly drawn to the descendents of the Appalachian families who settled in the small enclave to work in the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, dating to 1881. Undeterred by a visual impairment, he photographed people over and over.

Those photos, taken on porches, in back yards and in living rooms, have become a visual record of an era that has faded from the community squatting in the shadows of Atlanta's glass and marble towers.

An exhibition of 44 black-and-white portraits, "In the Mill's Shadow: Cabbagetown Photographs by Oraien Catledge" is on display at the Atlanta History Center until January 7. A 1985 book of his photos (University of Texas Press, Austin, 90 pages) is no longer in print.

As Catledge, now 72, moved from photo to photo in a recent interview, he recalled the people he met and the memories of a time when extended families and friends gathered at each others' homes to swap stories, sing and have fun. In its prime, the mill employed 2,600 people.

Most of the workers lived in simple frame houses built by mill owner Jacob Elsas when he recruited them and developed what became Cabbagetown -- so-named, some say, after the hardy vegetable that simmered on stoves all day while people were on the job.

The mill closed in 1977, but most of the families who had made the area their home continued to live in the close-knit, insulated neighborhood, despite the tough times.

Catledge, who has had scarred eye retinas since childhood, became fascinated with Cabbagetown after watching a television news report in May 1980.

What he saw were hard-scrabble residents explaining their plight: Their neighborhood -- overrun by absentee landlords -- was becoming a target for real estate speculators, and they were fighting to keep their homes.

The people reminded Catledge of his roots in Tallahachie County, Mississippi. The next morning, he grabbed his camera and set off for the community near downtown, and began taking pictures.

In this scene from the early 1980s, residents cool off on Carroll Street in front of buildings the cotton mill built for its workers

Catledge had only taken up photography as a hobby about a year before -- and with some difficulty. Because of his poor vision, he had to move in close to his subjects, and he focused on their eyes. Even so, he says it was a year before he was able to produce a quality image.

As time passed, he formed a strong bond with the residents, who were initially suspicious and reluctant to welcome him into their lives. Eventually, Catledge says he came to know them so well he sometimes strolled into a house uninvited, snapped pictures and left without saying a word.

He visited the neighborhood weekly in the first few years and has made more than 500 visits in the last two decades, producing at least 50,000 negatives.

"I'd go street to street and meet people. They started calling me 'the picture man,'" Catledge recalls fondly. "I was like the pied piper. I'd go down in my old station wagon, and people would just follow."

Each time Catledge returned, he'd hand out free copies of the photos he'd printed -- in some cases, these were the only photos the families had, and they would cover their walls with them.

Catledge spins stories like the mill spun cotton.

He tells of a woman he visited who had saved snowballs in her freezer from a rare Atlanta snowfall. She was waiting for a special occasion to take them out, she told Catledge.

"She finally got the snowballs out of the fridge and we ate them," he laughs. He photographed her cat.

One of the last links to the old Cabbagetown is native Joyce Brookshire, whose mother raised four children on her cotton mill wages

Also in the exhibit is a photo of a man with two wives, and a woman holding babies who had fallen off a second-story balcony a few days before the picture was taken.

Catledge's favorite subjects were children, who, despite their shabby appearance, were well-cared-for, he says. Catledge was a psychiatric social worker and consultant for the American Foundation for the Blind before retiring in 1990.

Cabbagetown native Joyce Brookshire, a neighborhood advocate and folk singer whose mother worked in the mill, says only about 75 households are left with ties to the factory, which has been turned into loft apartments.

She describes Catledge's warmth and uncanny ability to make friends with people she didn't even know lived in the neighborhood. She used to worry about him as he wandered the streets, Brookshire says. He'd reassure her.

"You can't help but love him," she says.

Most of the people Catledge photographed have drifted away, to be replaced by urban pioneers. Home values have tripled. Now, when he visits the neighborhood, most of the old-timers are gone. And air conditioning keeps people cool -- inside their homes, and off the porches that once defined the small society of mill workers and their families.

"There's a great deal of sadness that when I see a front porch and knock on the door, no one comes out," he says. "These were close friends."

Lofts spin new life for Atlanta cotton mill
July 24, 2000
Cotton Mill a historical marker
July 27, 2000
Atlanta neighborhood symbol goes up in flames
April 13, 1999

Atlanta History Center
Cabbagetown USA
Joyce Brookshire

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