Some photographs are worth revering because they imply a sense of motion. Matt White’s photographs are worth revering because they imply a pause. It might be a photo of his grandmother Ora Faye, sporting pearl earrings, a beauty-shop-fresh ’do and the gentlest of blue eyes. It might be the drum line for the Natchez Bulldogs, marching in blue and gold for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in southern Mississippi. It might be a dilapidated brick wall, on the verge of collapsing inward in an ill-fated communion of new kudzu leaf and old mortar. Whatever’s in front of his camera, White doesn’t “capture” a subject, to use a tired phrase, so much as he sits with it for a standstill of a moment, considers it, and then asks us to do the same. We asked White — photographer, documentarian and co-owner of the White Water Tavern — to let us showcase some of the work that earned him the “Best Photographer” spot in this year’s Best of Arkansas survey, so you can see for yourself.
Matt White