The Do Good Fund Library

November 2025

In the spirit of “Southern Belle Redux: Images from The Do Good Fund curated by Emily Rena Willians”, this month’s selection of photo books from the Do Good Fund Library features four female photographers who utilize photography to address themes of femininity both explicitly and through the ability of their work to shape Southern Femininity.

“Liberty Theatre” by Rosalind Fox Solomon indexes 77 of Fox Solomon’s tritone images that explore race, class, and segregation in the American South from 1970s–1990s and includes an essay, “The Play of Freedoms”, by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa.

“Knit Club” by Carolyn Drake records Drake’s photographic collaboration with a group of women loosely calling themselves “Knit Club.” A short story, or, “semifictional essay” by Rebecca Bengal is tucked in the middle of 50 mysterious portraits and observations of the foreboding members and events of the Knit Club.

Kristine Potter’s monograph “Dark Waters” blends myth and history through black-and-white staged pictures of young women on the brink of trauma and images of forested or isolated bodies of water. Potter reflects on the themes of power and violence in nineteenth and twentieth century American “murder ballads”, questioning the disturbing history of violence against women.

In “Taken From Memory”, Sheron Rupp presents early color photographs that connect her biographical past to portraits of individuals from commonly disregarded rural areas and small towns in Arkansas, the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont; Appalachia in Tennessee and Kentucky, and her hometown in Mansfield, Ohio.

September 2025

This month’s selections from the Do Good Fund Library were made in the spirit of our current exhibition that features work from Mississippi and New Orleans based photographers Maude Schuyler Clay, Langdon Clay, and Sophia Clay.

We’re enjoying “Maude Schuyler Clay: Mississippi History” by Maude Schuyler Clay, William Greiner’s new monograph “ NEUTRAL GROUND: New Orleans 1990-2005”, photographs by Maude Schuyler Clay and poems by Ann Fisher-Wirth in “Mississippi”, “The Mississippi Gulf Coast” by Timothy T. Isbel , and “New Delta Rising” by Magdalena Solé.

August 2025

We’re working our way through Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists by Robert Hughes and Shell Castle: Portrait of a North Carolina House by Elizabeth Matheson, studying up on the work of Carl Martin in his eponymous monograph, and enjoying Bill Yates’ Sweet Heart Nights - Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink.

What We’re Reading

February 2025

Blackbird Dust: Essays, Poems, and Photographs, by Jonathan Williams

Wish You Were Here: Photos from the American South, from The Bitter Southerner

Rineke Dijkstra: Beach Portraits, by Rineke Dijkstra

Americans Seen, by Sage Sohier

What We’re Reading

January 2024

Passing Time by Sage Sohier
Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink by Bill Yates
Dark Waters by Kristine Potter