Lamont Gallery Exhibition: Southern Rites

Southern Rites, an exhibition featuring American photographer and filmmaker Gillian Laub’s photography, film and interviews, has arrived on campus and will be in residence at the Lamont Gallery until December 15th. Southern Rites investigates the segregation of a prom in Montgomery County and the underlying racism in Vidalia, Georgia and all across America.

The exhibition initially began with Laub’s interest in storytelling, which she developed after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison while studying photography at the International Center of Photography. Since then, her work has been featured in numerous galleries including Harvard Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Terrana Collection and the New York Jewish Museum. 

“It’s an exhibition that you can appreciate the quality of it terms of the message, even when the message is difficult,” LaFountain said.

Southern Rites has been a passion project for Laub. Her involvement began when an editor for Spin magazine told Laub about a letter he received from a high school student looking for coverage on her segregated prom. “He told me that I had to go down to Georgia and tell the story,” Laub said.

After spending years going back to Montgomery County, photographing and interviewing the students in the high school and citizens of the town, The New York Times published the photo essay and multimedia piece in 2009. “It got a lot of attention,” Laub said. “The school was really forced to integrate their prom. I was not exactly welcome back in the town, but I knew that I had to continue working, and I knew that the problems we’re seeing were part of something larger, and I just wanted to continue and follow it.”

Laub continued, describing how moved she was seeing the bravery and honesty of the people she interacted with. “I fell in love with these high school students,” she said. “So many of them just felt like they really were changemakers, and I wanted to kind of follow their lives.” She returned throughout the following year and even made an HBO documentary executive produced by John Legend, Troy Carter and Mike Jordan.

Interim Director and Curator of the Lamont Gallery Weston LaFountain described the impact of Laub’s work. “It’s an exhibition that you can appreciate the quality of it terms of the message, even when the message is difficult,” LaFountain said.

Andrew Lewin ’77 initially brought the exhibition to campuses and pitched to Laub that the exhibition should debut at Exeter. “I found this body of work fascinating,” Lewin said. “I very much wanted it to come to Exeter. Gillian and a curator agreed that it should be in a high school, and I felt Exeter was a perfect place precisely because the gallery was a teaching gallery, and one can access it all the time.”

On campus, many people including the staff of the gallery, gallery proctors and instructors were involved in arranging the exhibition. Gallery proctor and upper Elizabeth Kostina explained that she and other gallery proctors had first heard about Laub’s work last spring and started planning the exhibit in beginning of fall term. As part of the preparation, the proctors watched Laub’s HBO documentary, Southern Rites. “It’s a very emotional exhibit, and when we watched the movie, we had some people cry because it’s such a tragic story.” Kostina said.

Proctors were particularly concerned about how to invite students into the gallery as Kostina explained: “We talked about how to make the gallery act as a physical space that is both like welcoming but also can reflect how brutal this exhibit is. Something that we discussed as a group was having a space in the back as a place for reflection. We wanted to make sure there’s a safe space for people to express emotion in that way,” she said.

LaFountain explained that the room allowed people to reflect and share their feelings by writing and anonymously posting their thoughts on a wall. “The word ‘shocked’ appears again and again in an obviously mixed socio-economic and multi-cultural audience,” he said. “It’s heartening to see how people have been affected by this exhibition emotionally and spiritually, and it’s a hopeful thing to think that, in its own small way, this show can facilitate actions that can change the world.”

English Instructors have been very involved in ensuring that students on campus engage with the exhibit. According to English Instructor Christine Knapp, she was approached last spring about integrating the exhibition into fall classes. “We knew about the exhibit well in advance so we could plan to devote some time in the fall to visit the exhibition and to incorporate it into our 310 classes,” Knapp said.

Knapp arranged for her 310 English class to visit the exhibition. Beforehand, the class analyzed illustrations, wrote about composition of photographs and discussed aspects of visual art and design. “In the gallery they made some insightful comments about the use of light, the relationship between the foreground and the background, color, and negative space,” Knapp said. “My students have been reading articles related to the exhibition and responding to writing prompts that probe some of the issues raised by the exhibition. The final narrative will be based on one of these prompts.”

Many students went to see the exhibit through their classes, clubs or simply because they were interested. Lower Sarah Huang attended the opening and noted the differences and similarities between the Montgomery County High School and Exeter. “The high school from the exhibit was so different from our experience here,” Huang said. “Gillian Laub described the segregated prom in Vidalia as a more ‘honest’ form of racism that is symptomatic of greater issues shared throughout the country­­—not just in the South. I honestly think the same attitudes that led to segregated proms in Vidalia reside on campus and throughout the US. However, the difference is that at Exeter, as shown by the student body and administration’s responses to race issues, we’re often so concerned about not appearing racist rather than actually being racist.”

Elizabeth Kostina admired Laub’s talent in taking photos that tell a story. “In the past exhibits, it’s always been a form of sculpture, and they’ve been very good at portraying what they want to get across. I think it’s harder to do that with photography and some instances so how she frames the shot is really nice, but it’s also just being able to tell a story through solely pictures I think is pretty remarkable,” she said. “And the narrative that comes with every photo is what drives it home.”

LaFountain encouraged more students to visit the gallery and explained that racial prejudice not only exists in Laub’s photos, but also pertains to the Exeter community. “As the Academy moves forward with its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiative, this exhibition presents an excellent opportunity to engage with the subject matter of social injustice—through several interdisciplinary approaches—to move the dial on a topic that affects us all, regardless of where we are from,” he said. “It’s not just about the South, it’s about everywhere.”

Kostina echoed LaFountain’s sentiment, explaining that the gallery will bring more awareness to the community. “You have to quite literally put yourself in their shoes. A huge part of it is being able to acknowledge the privilege that comes with being who you are and especially since we’re here, you’ve got to take that into account.”

Quoting a story that Hasan Minhaj told about words of advice he received from Jon Stewart, Knapp concluded that creative expression can have an enormous impact on the human experience. “‘Art, music, culture, all of these things, they’re kind of lightning rods’—I think he meant bolts—‘that just strike people’s hearts at the right moment.’ For some of us this exhibition may be a kind of lightning strike,” Knapp said. “I hope it will make us more aware of the racism and bigotry that are a part of daily life for others.”