Presentation
Part 1: Tom Rankin introduces the life and work of Paul Kwilecki and his relationship to Decatur County, Georgia.
Part 2: Rankin discusses the evolution of Kwilecki’s photographic style and the process of assembling the book, One Place.
Part 3: A discussion of Kwilecki photographs that reveal insider-outsider tensions in Decatur County.
Part 4: Kwilecki’s subjects and the continuity of his perspective across decades of “staying put.”

About the Author
Tom Rankin is professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies and director of the MFA program in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University. His books include Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta (University Press of Mississippi, 1993), Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre: Photographs of a River Life (University Press of Mississippi, 1995), and Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible (Norton, 2000), among others. Rankin writes frequently about photography and the documentary tradition and his photographs have been widely exhibited.
Publication Update
In January 2019, Southern Spaces updated this publication as part of the journal’s redesign and migration to Drupal 7. Updates include image and video adjustments, as well as revised recommended resources and related publications. For access to the original layout, paste this publication’s URL into the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine and view any version of the piece that predates December 2018.