The Eldest Daughter by Summer '07 contender Kathleen Robbins.

"Do you have someone in your life?
Mam? Oh. Yes, Frances.
Don’t forget to fall in love. You will fall in love, won’t you?"

These few words encompass my introduction to the work of today's contender Kathleen Robbins. I hadn't even seen her images yet and I was all of a sudden swept into a new world. From there, it continued:

Each time I visited there was a greater sense of urgency in her voice. The machine that pulls water from the air kicks on and inside it’s now, outside it’s then. Inside it’s 1928. Outside it’s now. Time and place are experienced differently here. It’s a disorienting place to be, and when I come back I lose my sensibilities after a few hours. I forget how long I’ve been gone and which life I’m living. Mine or my mother's. My mother’s mother. Some ancestor I only know from photographs.

I'm no longer sure if Ms. Robbins is a poet or a photographer. Coming upon her images and looking at the above photo, I let the words that served as my introduction linger between my ears. A story colored the frame before my eyes. The photograph offers a delicate view into a pristine home, with its hand-made bedspread drenched in antiquity, and a room so white that I can only think of weddings. To top it all off, the picture is titled, "The Eldest Daughter."

So, I've already mentioned once that I have this problem where I automatically create stories for everything, right? Well, my mind is basically writing a book about today's photo. All I can think about is the eldest daughter. Is it her wedding day? Is this the room she will be leaving for good? What does all the white say about the situation? Such a beautiful, homely bed has strong connotations of family and warmth, and all the white gives the room a godly quality to it. There is something so well put-together and Southern about this image that makes it completely foreign to me, yet it's also kind of mesmerizing for that reason.

Robbins understands this eccentricity of the South and goes on to explain how her interest in this region came about:

I was first introduced to images of the American South through film adaptations (Long Hot Summer, Baby Doll, Ode to Billy Joe, Sweet Bird of Youth, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, dark and sad and so over the top you couldn’t take your eyes away. I loved how the southern landscape looked in Technicolor, but I hated what the stories revealed about us. My photographs weave together my own memories of “home� with those of my friends and family, collapsing a sense of personal history with a broader visual concept of the Mississippi Delta. My own image of home was formed by an experience, which straddled the line between myth and reality. While many areas of the southeast are beginning to resemble any city or town in the US, the delta refuses to assimilate. It remains profoundly eccentric.

Kathleen Robbins was born in Washington D.C. in 1976 and grew up in the Mississippi Delta. She has a BFA from Millsaps College and an MFA from the University of New Mexico's graduate photography program. Her work has most recently been exhibited at the 2006 Ping Yao International Photography Festival in Ping Yao, China and in the 2006 International Juried Exhibition at the San Diego Art Institute’s Museum of the Living Artist. She is currently the Assistant Professor of Art and Photography at the University of South Carolina.

Check out Kathleen Robbins' website for more photographers of her home in the American South.

The deadline is getting closer, you future hot shots, so get your work in today!