WHEN: An opening reception will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday. The exhibit will be on view for about two weeks.
WHERE: Lincoln Memorial Baptist Church, 1500 S. Roxboro St.
ADMISSION: Free
INSIDE
Photos from "Undying Love: Echoes of the Southside" by Endia Beal | D3
By Cliff Bellamy
cbellamy@heraldsun.com; 419-6744
DURHAM -- Endia Beal is not from Durham, but her family has strong roots here. She has always had a close connection to the Southside and St. Theresa neighborhoods, where Beal's grandparents grew up and where Beal often visited when she was a little girl.
During her life, Beal, 24, has seen the character of the neighborhood change, and not all to the good. She remembers a time when residents were more closely knit and when the area was not always associated with crime. "You could walk down the street and feel safe. Everyone knew everyone else," Beal said.
The neighorhoods are bordered roughly by Lakewood Avenue on the north, Roxboro Street to the east, Lawson Street to the south and Forest Hills to the west. Despite crime and drugs, Beal said the neighborhood still retains some of that older character. There was "a connection in the community ... that still exists to a certain extent, but is not what it was."
In 2005, Beal, a Winston-Salem native and documentary photographer, began photographing the neighborhood to try and portray and convey that community spirit, which those outside the neighborhood do not always see. Beal took a lot of photos, and 15 of them go on view Saturday at Lincoln Memorial Baptist Church on Roxboro Street. (The exhibit then will travel to the Southside Community Center, and Beal then wants to display more of her photographs at a gallery to be determined.)
The exhibit reflects her strong family connection to the neighborhood. Beal's grandfather, Hughie Edward Owens, grew up on Scout Drive, as did her grandmother, Sarah Allene Owens. Beal has dedicated the exhibit to Hughie Owens, who died in 2002. The opening also will be a birthday celebration for Sarah Owens, who will turn 86 Saturday. Hughie Owens was a carpenter and entrepreneur who helped people in the neighborhood, Beal said. Her grandmother lives in the house where her grandfather was raised.
Her grandfather, and her mom, also attended the church where the exhibit will be on view.
That sense of connectedness is portrayed in the photo from which the exhibit gets its name. "Undying Love" is a photograph of a wall in her grandmother's house, which is full of portraits of family members. "That image is very personal to me," Beal said. "It not only represents my family, it represents people who grew up in Southside," and their sense of community, their shared history, she said.
Beal photographed the area between 2005 and 2008, using a large format lens. She spent a lot of time on Enterprise Street and Scout Drive, and because she is not from the area, she had to work to gain the trust of the people she wanted to document. A man who calls himself Grits allowed her to take his portrait. She gave him a print of the portrait, and repeated that process with other people in the neighborhood. During this exhibit residents will be able to see the different portraits for the first time.
Viewers will see "a street, urban lifestyle," but without violence, Beal said of the photographs. She wants viewers to see the sense of community that still exists. "They're going to see compassion" in the form of intimacy and friendship between young children. "They're going to see hope," she said.
Her previous documentary work has taken Beal to Florence, Italy, Germany, New York City, Atlanta and Washington.
"I think the purpose of my art is to show that cultural interaction is imperative," she said. "I think sometimes we close ourselves from the unknown... I was [in Southside] for three years. I didn't get shot. I didn't get mugged. If you take the time to get to know a culture [or] a person, you will learn things about people who are in your own back yard and in your community. And the people in that community will learn about themselves, too."
