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BIOGRAPHY

 

For several years, I have been making photographs of the rural south, focusing on North Carolina and its closed cotton mills. My heart is in the mountains of the northwestern part of the state, where I have made a second home with my family. As a child I grew up around the textile industry. My father worked for Hanes, selling underwear and hosiery. With each promotion we moved further east, until we reached Winston-Salem, which was their corporate headquarters. As a child I had fond memories of visiting the mill and being fascinated with the large looms and knitting machines.

In 1976 I graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts with a BFA degree in Scenic Design. For the following two years I went to New York City, assisting various Broadway stage designers. I moved to Los Angeles in 1978 to pursue a career in television design. As an art director, I have worked on many series throughout the 80s and 90s, earning an Emmy Award and several nominations. While designing "for the camera" I balanced my collaborative work on the set with personal photographic assignments. My photography became a research tool for the various projects I was working on. I would travel extensively, shooting locations for productions, documenting architecture and landscapes, both urban and rural.

Upstairs RailingBy creating a dramatic set for a script, or uncovering the drama of an existing room, I see a direct connection between my work as a designer and the images that I make as a photographer. Rooms are metaphors for states of being. I am looking for clues, or objects, like an archeologist, by photographing these haunting places. And like archeology, these rooms reveal levels of time.

My photographs tell stories of ordinary places and things. Somewhere between man and nature, stand man-made objects, symbols of our social condition. Through these objects are revealed the drama, history and aspirations of humankind. In the abandoned farmhouses, churches and fallen barns, in the bridges, train tracks and crumbling cornices, in doorways and windows, rusty signs and storefronts, I see richness and poverty, hope and despair, joy and sorrow, and pervading all, a sense of time ingrained in the continuity of life.

 

GLENCOE MILL PROJECT

 

I have always been fascinated with the places and things that are left behind. For the past seven years I have been documenting these places in hopes to discover what is the underlying spirit and vitality of the vernacular architecture. My work for a majority of the images was in black and white, seemingly a "natural" for the rural imagery. It was during the month of July 2000 that my project changed when I stumbled upon the Glencoe Mill in Alamance County.

I remember the hot and muggy afternoon as I was driving back from photographing a farmhouse in Faison, NC. Being a member of Preservation North Carolina, I had read about the Glencoe Mill project, its mill workers' houses available for purchase and restoration through PNC. So I decided to find the Haw River and see what Glencoe was all about. I found the turn-off after a few wrong directions as the afternoon sun was getting low in the sky. What I discovered there, to my surprise, were the rich and vibrant colors on well-worn plaster walls, so layered with bits and pieces of torn wallpaper and debris. These humble cottages were tiny jewels hiding behind their weathered exteriors. I loaded my Pentax 67 with color film and began making pictures of the interiors.

For the most part these rooms had been cleaned-up in the sense of personal belongings being left behind. What I found were fragments of torn linoleum with pages from a child's Sunday school coloring book, a few hunting tags, and some unpaid bills. Many of the walls were used as tablets for quickly scribbled phone numbers. One room had a faded red heart drawn in crayon on the wall, a calendar penciled-in on another. Hangers and broken lightbulbs, peeling wallpaper, and mud-dauber wasps were the shared props of these houses.

I came back to Glencoe five more times during the next year. With each visit I saw something new. And I saw familiar rooms in new light. I could never have captured the spirit of Glencoe with one visit. Or two. As with any creative process, I had to let the project evolve. Lynn Cowan, of Preservation North Carolina showed me the office and store, as well as the huge brick mill. Some of these images are included here under Mill Office. The majority of photographs was taken of the interiors and may be viewed under Mill Houses.

Currently showing at the photo-eye gallery, Santa Fe, website are nineteen images from the "No One's Home" portfolio. The images are produced in a limited edition of ten signed and numbered prints. For further information about the exhibit, including prices and availability, contact Debe@redchairstudio.com.

I hope that you will enjoy the sampling of images of the mill houses and office. As I photographed Glencoe, I could not help but wonder about the families who once lived and worked there. Some houses will fall down, some will be restored. It is the patina of human use and neglect that continues to be an inspiration in my work.

Debe Hale, February 25, 2002

 

CONTACT INFO

 

For further information about prints, prices, and availability please contact Debe Hale at:

 

818.981.4251

Email: debe@redchairstudio.com

 

 

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