At The Brooklyn Rail, Ralph Lemon: From Out of Space by Allison Carey on the show at Paula Cooper Gallery.
Leading with the Sorites Paradox (when does a heap stop being a heap?), the author brings up the image of Bryant’s Grocery in Money, Mississippi, the initial setting for the Emmett Till tragedy. She writes:
But to me, the gradual decay of this grocery store is quite loud. By letting the earth slowly reabsorb the remains of the store, the traumatic histories of this space, and a lack of resolution, remain at the forefront. To tear down the store would be an attempt to obliterate the past; to replace it would be an attempt to write a new story altogether; to conserve it would confine it within the past. This subtle process of decomposition continues to take new forms, albeit slowly, rejecting finality.
I’ve been photographing the Bryant Store in Money, Mississippi since at least 2005. These aren’t all the visits I’ve made, but shows a progression.
2005:
2011:
2016:
2018:
Google Street View, January 2024:
In November last year, the barn where Emmett Till was beaten was purchased to be opened as a memorial site.
I read Wright Thompson’s The Barn (available here at Bookshop / Amazon) — highly recommend.
The museum — called the Intrepid Center — as I visited it in 2013:
There’s also an interpretive center / library now across the street from the Tallahatchie County courthouse, which has been preserved as a museum.
Thinking back to Allison Carey mentioning the Sorites Paradox: it’s crumbling, but preserving, saving — seemingly so much in such a state of flux. There’s more structure in understanding…and what’s disappearing is actually adding.
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