William Christenberry
| William Christenberry | |
|---|---|
| Born |
William Andrew Christenberry Jr. November 5, 1936 Tuscaloosa, Alabama, U.S. |
| Died | November 28, 2016 (aged 80) Washington, D.C. |
| Known for | Photographer, Painter, Sculptor |
William Andrew Christenberry Jr. (November 5, 1936 – November 28, 2016) was a photographer, painter, and sculptor who worked with personal and somewhat mythical themes growing out of his childhood experiences in Hale County, Alabama.
Christenberry received his bachelor's (1958) and master's (1959) degrees in fine arts from the University of Alabama, studying under abstract expressionist Melville Price. Beginning in 1968 he taught at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C.
His artistic career began with the painting of large abstract-expressionist canvasses, but gradually he began to be drawn to material that spoke about the place of his childhood. Although he was raised in Tuscaloosa, Christenberry spent his summers with extended family in rural Hale County. After graduating from the University of Alabama and beginning a promising, if not immediately rewarding, artistic career in New York City, he came across the 1941 book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee describes in prose, and Walker Evans in photographs, the experience of living among the dirt-poor farming families of Hale County during the Great Depression. Some of Evans's photographs made a deep impression on Christenberry.
Shortly after beginning a professorship at Corcoran College, Christenberry began making annual visits to Hale County during the summer to visit family and to explore and make photographs. Originally these all were made with a Kodak Brownie camera given to him as a child, but he later moved to a large format view camera in order to capture more detail. On one occasion in 1973, Walker Evans, who had encouraged Christenberry to take his photographs seriously, accompanied him. This was Evans's first and only return to Hale County since 1936.
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