What does it mean to be in a place but not of it? What are the associations and connotations of the American South if you are from there? What about if you are not? Whatever your orientation is, the deep South truly is its own zip code, and its own zip codes within zip codes if you spend enough time there or in conversation with those native to that place. Romantic decay, vast tracts of unpopulated and lonely-looking land, fierce pride and loyalty mixed with problematic politics and provincialism are but a few things that come to my mind as someone who lived for many years in Tennessee and Georgia. And then left. And then returned. And then left again.

This push-pull/pull-push relationship of place and personhood is an important element in the work of Kathleen R. Robbins, originally a native of the Mississippi Delta. Like many that inhabit rural areas with dreams of something larger than the family farm, Robbins transplanted herself away from the homestead, seeking education and opportunities in other parts of the country. In the fall of 2001, she and her brother decided to return, and both inhabited family properties that had been unoccupied for decades.

Skinning House, from the series Into the Flatland by Kathleen Robbins

Untitled, from the series Into the Flatland by Kathleen Robbins

Of the experience of re-inhabiting these spaces, Robbins writes that:

...They had begun to settle into the earth, and we felt we were doing something important by re-inhabiting them. I ate from my great-grandmother's china, drank from her crystal and slept in her bed. At dusk I rocked on the porch and watched the blackbirds descend on the canebrake planted by my great-grandfather. Living on the farm I existed in a strange continuum. My family's history and their connection to this place were markedly present in my everyday experience.

The entire Into the Flatland series has been shot over a period of five years, and explores, comments upon and documents Robbins' relationship to land, her family, to memory, shared histories and legacies. Her images are infused with a sense of both the familiar and the foreign, as seen from the filter of one who is sometimes in a place but not of it. In the full project statement on her site, she writes eloquently of negotiating this conflict:

Into the Flatfland explores familial obligation and our conflicted relationship with "home" and combines a sense of personal history with a broader visual concept of the American South. The photographs in this series... are the people I love most in a place that I am deeply connected to. I chose to leave the Delta for many of the same reasons anyone ever chooses to leave a rural area, and there will always be a certain amount of guilt associated with that choice. This is land that my family has inhabited for generations, and I am pulled to this place in a way that I am not able to fully articulate. It is not my nostalgia alone that creates this longing; it is that of my mother and my mother's mother.

Kathleen R. Robbins has been creating images her connections to the Delta for some time, and we've written about her earlier work in previous HHS! entry periods. With Into the Flatland, her vision seems strong and completely realized, and that despite her statement to the contrary, one that she has gracefully articulated.

The complete series can be viewed on her website.