Debbie Fleming Caffery

Debbie Fleming Caffery grew up in the sugarcane country of southern Louisiana and has been photographing the mysterious allure of small-town life in the greater Mississippi Delta for the last forty years. In 1988, she ventured north and began photographing former boomtowns and farming communities in northern Louisiana and western Mississippi. She continued to photograph these towns on and off for the next two decades, but when she received her commission from the High in 2015, she was able to focus her attention on completing the project that had captivated her years before.

Caffery’s portraits and landscapes capture these struggling areas and the people who persist there despite the rapidly declining population and collapsing economic base. Once thriving hubs for agriculture and river trade, these crumbling communities now experience high rates of unemployment, inadequate health care, and a lack of important social services. While Caffery is particularly attuned to issues of labor and how the legacy of slavery continues to stratify society, she expresses the textures of place and nuances of her subject’s lived experience in a manner that is intuitive and deeply personal rather than anthropological. The genuine spirit of her photographs is the result of relationships with her subjects that are built over many years and countless conversations. She photographed in people’s homes, in bars or other gathering places, and on the rough-hewn farmlands at the edge of town. As she described her approach, “I get out of my car, and walk around, people start talking to me, and it leads to all kinds of things. People tell you stories. There’s this constant storytelling, but it’s true storytelling.” Her enigmatic photographs, distinct for their richly dark shadows and sense of motion, express not only the tension of a difficult life but also the unbridled joy of being among friends and family and the deep connection one feels to home.

Caffery’s commission is exhibited here for the first time.

View all works in the commission.