Sermons and Sacred Pictures
Photography (collection)
•
28m
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2004 • 29 minutes
In association with the Center for Southern Folklore, SERMONS AND SACRED PICTURES profiles Reverend L.O. Taylor, a Memphis-based Baptist minister who in the 1930s and 40s built a fiery reputation by lacing his sermons with parables, fables and dramatic visual descriptions.
Taylor was also an inspired photographer and filmmaker with a keen interest in preserving a visual and aural record of the fabric of black American life. He photographed and filmed businesses and schools, the National Baptist Convention, baptisms, funerals, and individuals in the quiet dignity of their everyday lives. Over the years he compiled an extraordinary record of Southern black life before the Civil Rights movement.
This film is an innovative combination of Taylor's films and audio recordings, images of contemporary Memphis, and commentary by his widow and others who knew him, forming an intertwined narrative about the pioneering documentarian and social activist. Taylor emerges as a man of humor, piety and intelligence, vibrantly involved in the community he loved.
Up Next in Photography (collection)
-
The Spectre of Hope
Directed by Paul Carlin • Documentary • With John Berger, Sebastiao Salgado • 2001 • 52 minutes
Over the past 30 years Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado's work has won every major award for excellence. More importantly, his photographs have had an actual impact on the world and how it is ...
-
Suzy Lake: Playing with Time
Directed by Annette Mangaard • Documentary • 2015 • 62 minutes
Photographer Suzy Lake is one of the formative feminist artists to evolve out of the heyday of the 1960’s and the Second Wave. A master of the art of self-portraiture, Lake influenced Cindy Sherman as well as a host of other female a...
-
Through A Lens Darkly
Directed by Thomas Allen Harris • Documentary • 2014 • 92 minutes
The first documentary to explore the American family photo album through the eyes of black photographers, Through a Lens Darkly probes the recesses of American history to discover images that have been suppressed, forgotten and lo...
