"Thomas Grocery" by Vickie Tate Thornton.
As a child, Vickie Tate Thornton loved to visit her grandfather Edgar Magee at his house in the neighborhood then known as The Bottom. Today it is called Old South Baton Rouge. The boundaries of the area are fluid, depending on whom you ask. “I consider that it runs from the River Road to Dalrymple and from Government Street to Chimes Street,” said Thornton in a recent interview. “My grandfather’s house is still there. He lived on Grant Street between Highland Road and McKinley High School, down the street from [musician] Joe Tex.”
Last May, a selection of Thornton’s black-and-white photos of the neighborhood was exhibited in the lobby of the Main Library on Goodwood Boulevard. She will be displaying the exhibit, As We Are Now, at the Carver Library on Terrace Street from July 1 to July 31.
Thornton began photographing the neighborhood as her senior project for a B.A. in fine arts. (She graduated last May.) In her artist’s statement, she wrote, “[M]ore and more people are leaving the neighborhood. The area, although impoverished, is still self supporting, with Mom & Pop grocery stores, restaurants, clubs & bars, barber shops, and hair salons. … I can still remember South Baton Rouge as a vibrant neighborhood. … A noticeable decline began in the early ‘70s as houses, businesses, and entire apartment complexes were disappearing. … My intention is to document the neighborhood and its residents as it is now, before it evolves again.”
“Baton Rouge is so big and has so many neighborhoods,” said Thornton on a visit to her exhibit. “I like an old neighborhood with plenty of character. Nobody thinks about The Bottom any more. It has a reputation as a bad neighborhood, with high crime and poverty. But I don’t think that’s the case.
“I wanted to portray this historic neighborhood in a positive light, to show what Old South Baton Rouge is really like. People have cookouts. They sit on their porches. They socialize with their neighbors. When you need a stick of butter, you don’t drive to Walmart, you walk to the corner store.”
Thornton, a Baton Rouge native who lives near City Park and works at LSU, first began thinking about the area a few years ago, when she cut through it on her way to somewhere else. “I started taking photos and visiting with people,” she said. “I would drive up and down every street. I’d stop little old ladies on the corner and ask to take their picture.
“I work during the week, so I do photography on weekends. I took pictures on Saturdays. On Sundays I would print and edit. If something special happened—fog, rain, baseball games, church services, choir practice—I would take annual leave for a couple of hours to cover it, then go back to work and stay late to catch up.”
Thornton, who describes herself as a “career student,” took years to earn her degree while employed at LSU; she has worked at various jobs on campus for thirty-five years and is currently a secretary in the chemistry department. “I started school in the 1970s, but I ended up working,” she said. “I decided to go back to school when I was pregnant with my first child in the fall of 1991.”
She began as a history major and then switched to business. “Finally I was able to get into a photography class,” said Thornton, who as a staff member is allowed to take three daytime hours per semester. She also took night classes. She found herself spending long hours in the “lab”— the darkroom. “I’d get out of class at six and then have a two-hour lab,” she said. “It clicked with me.” She realized that photography was her true passion and switched to fine arts. “As a senior, I changed my major. I have a minor in history and a minor in painting.”
Although she will continue documenting The Bottom, Thornton said she won’t take more classes, at least for a while. “I need to give my family a break,” she said. “My sons are twenty-one and twenty-two, both in college and still living at home. They have been very helpful with my studies. They’ve posed for me; they’d sit and turn so I could practice with the [studio] lights. My husband Alvin was extremely supportive. He’d take the kids to the park so I could study.”
Sons Justin and Jordan appear in one of her exhibit photos, eating crawfish at Brooks Park. Other photos show musician Chris Thomas King playing at FestForAll and the Lutheran Cemetery where Thornton’s grandfather is buried. “I’ve tried and tried to find his grave,” she said.
A shot of Thomas Grocery on Thomas Delpit and Polk shows a kid on a bicycle in front of the door. “A lot of people ride their bikes to the store,” she said.
A house covered in graffiti bears the message, “Do Not Destroy. My Grandfather Blood Built This House.”
Some of her favorite photos were taken inside the LSO convenience store at the corner of Roosevelt Street and Highland Road. “Every neighborhood has a convenience store,” she said, pointing out the hats hanging above the cashier. “They sell beverages and snacks and hats and keychains. I hung out in the store for fifteen or twenty minutes shooting photos.”
A shot of the Lincoln Theater on Myrtle Walk shows its broken marquee. “I just wanted to do something different,” she said. “It was raining that day, with these nice clouds. I have other pictures with birds nesting in the sign.” Thornton hopes the Lincoln won’t go the way of the Paramount movie house on Third Street, which was torn down in 1979 to make way for a parking lot. She also laments the demise of Tabby’s Blues Box and the Rose and Thomas Café on North Boulevard, which were razed and replaced by an overpass. “That was such a loss—an unnecessary loss,” she said. “There were abandoned buildings that could have been torn down. Instead they tore down landmarks of historic value.”
A photo of a gas station at the corner of Terrace and Highland focuses on a man with his head under the hood of a car. “His father has worked on my car,” said Thornton.
A young man instructs kids in the fine points of bicycle repair. “This is Front Yard Bikes,” said Thornton. “His landlord got nervous about all these kids hanging around, so he found this place on Roosevelt near the railroad tracks. It looks like an old garage covered in tin. They all gather around and he gives them advice. Then they eat cookies. The kids are so into working on their bikes.”
As befits her stated goal, to show the ongoing evolution of the neighborhood, Thornton has shot new construction on Carr Alley. “They used to have projects there,” she said. “They tore them down and built these houses.”
Thornton put together a large book of her color photos for a bookmaking class. “I wanted to do something meaningful, not just ducks on the lake. The [professor’s] rule was no animals, no babies, and no children. After we completed them, we put the books out on the table and everybody went through each other’s work.” Thornton said class members “were surprised that The Bottom looked so normal.”
Early on, Thornton shot landscapes. “Then I decided to do documentary photography. Street photography seems to be something I can do well. I started off shooting buildings, because they were disappearing. My teachers suggested I add people. It opened up a new horizon.
“I like to catch people unaware. When they pose, it’s like the emotion goes away, like they don’t know what to do with themselves. But I’m very shy about talking to people, which is why this project has been so hard for me.”
Long before she became a photographer herself, Thornton admired the work of others. “My first inspiration was Ansel Adams. I was fourteen or fifteen, and I came across a planner my sister had with his photos in it. I tried to find out more about him. Later I collected photography books—Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks.
“I saw Parks’ exhibit The Making of an Argument at the New Orleans Museum of Art last year. He used his camera to bring attention to poverty and segregation. It’s not just a snapshot; it evokes an emotion. It was so gritty. It’s an inside look at a gang leader’s life. The photos speak volumes; they make you wonder what was going through [the subject’s] mind.
“Another person who inspired me is C.C. Lockwood. I know he’s out there for hours waiting for the right shot.
“My best photos just found me. They presented themselves to me. I like fog pictures. I’ll go out early in the morning. I like rain, too. It’s like a security blanket. I love to go out in it.
“I want to be an artist, to create. Street photography is something I stumbled into. Now I want to go back and get stories to go with my pictures. I want to continue this.”
Ruth Laney can be reached at ruthlaney@cox.net.
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A collection of Vickie Tate Thornton’s photographs will be on exhibit through the month of July at the Carver Branch library, 720 Terrace Street; (225) 389-7440.
To see more of her photos, visit vickietatethornton.com.
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