Rotan Switch documents life on my grandparents’ cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community’s central landmark – the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta. Although it has not been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of racism and injustice. This project spans forty-five years, from 1978 to present day, following five generations of a community. These photographs are complicated; they exist in the context of the socioeconomic structures of the rural South. Although the subjects are family to me, as a white photographer and the granddaughter of a landowner, my photographs of the Black community implicate my own role in reinforcing these power structures. In a community in which most people spend their time working or caring for children, my ability to observe and document in itself has been a position of privilege. I’ve lived in many places, but my idea of home remains firmly rooted in the Arkansas land and people. I've come to realize that all the photographs I made at Rotan are explorations of home. I’ve also come to realize that the place I call home is not perfect. These images are a record of my story of Rotan, a story that is specific to my and my family’s role in a place where inequities exist to this day. I have done my best to acknowledge this complicated history.
