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About MARIAL MARIAL in the News Ageless memories, timeless storiesAtlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004 By Jerry Cullum "MYTHOS" MEANS "STORY" in Greek, so it makes sense that Emory University's Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life focuses on Americans' stories and down-home celebrations, from holiday get-togethers to wedding ceremonies. Some of these stories hang on MARIAL's walls with strikingly good color photographs of the people who tell them, including Newton County native Dana Kemp. She was living in North Carolina in 1996 when she began photographing Casper Hawkins placing flags on military graves. When he died in 2001, she regretted never having recorded his personal anecdotes. Kemp hasn't made that mistake since. The photos and stories in her "Visions and Voices" exhibit mix art and documentation wonderfully. They give us well-chosen direct glimpses of particular everyday lives, mostly ranging from the North Carolina mountains to Conyers and Covington, but with a few images from a summer residency in the Western states. Everybody has known people like this, but not exactly like this. Photographed picking day lilies and remembering the days of cooking for the farm's harvesting crews, Thelma Payne is both a familiar type and uniquely herself. The two homeless veterans Kemp encountered in Montana have specific tales that are mirrored across America. That blend of feel-good storytelling and occasional stabs at the heart runs all through Kemp's show. As one photograph shows us, nobody makes better desserts than Kemp's relatives. In a series of photos, we see the family has been going to the annual Salem Camp Meeting for decades, keeping alive a church tradition from the nation's earliest days. If you want a serious and totally engaging look at how they lived then and how some of us live now, this is a show for you. Though MARIAL is normally not open on weekends, Kemp will host an afternoon reception Saturday . . . and she has stories to tell about how she got the stories she has so memorably documented. THE 411: Reception 1-5 p.m. Saturday. Regular hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays through Nov. 12. Emory University MARIAL Center, 1256 Briarcliff Road, Suite 413-E, Atlanta. 404-727-3440, www.marial.emory.edu.
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