Collection comprises 291 black-and-white photographs and 46 oral history recordings by Jesse Pyrant Andrews documenting rural and small-town life in the Piedmont plateau of central southern Virginia and northern North Carolina. Most of the images are portraits of local people, along with scenes from homesteads, small towns, farms, and grave sites. Major themes include tobacco cultivation; the lives of farmers, migrant workers, war veterans, small business owners, and laid-off textile workers; regional architecture; historic sites; and traditional activities such as music-making, constructing handmade firearms, and working with leather. Together, the images and interviews speak to significant changes in this rural Piedmont region's cultures and economies as it has transitioned into the 20th and then the 21st centuries.
In the Veterans Project series, Andrews documents through portraits and in-depth audio interviews the experiences of U.S. military veterans, primarily in the Vietnam and Gulf Wars, but also in World War II. The series includes a Vietnam War veteran's manuscript memoir and a tribute essay to one veteran, written by Andrews. Some of these resources may contain disturbing content.
The Carter-Wooding Project, also comprising photographs and several oral histories, documents two Halifax County, Virginia families, the Carters and the Woodings, and their rural property dating back to an 18th-century Huguenot land grant. This project forms part of the Portraits series in this collection. Interior and exterior shots of a former plantation, "Mountain View," in Tightsqueeze, Virginia (sold at auction in 2020) are featured in the series Life At Large.
Photographs from the series 13-Month Crop, documenting tobacco farming, were featured in a solo exhibit of Andrews' work hosted by the Rubenstein Library at Duke University in 2002.
Portraits and oral histories in the Burlington Mills series document the experiences of former southern Virginia textile workers.
Another series documents a trip on an Amtrak train. Rounding out the collection are images of street life and people in New York City, California, and Massachusetts, and a few of patterns in plants and ice.
Most of the photographs are accompanied by captions written by the photographer, commenting on the individuals, their life experiences, and aspects of local culture and society. Captions for the Veterans series include biographies as well as historical details related to several wars in which the U.S. was involved.
A large selection of photographs from the Andrews collection has been digitized and is available on the Duke Digital Collections website; links to this content are included in this inventory for corresponding prints.
Originally processed by Elizabeth Arnold, John Mayrose, 2007.
Processed and described by Paula Jeannet and Matthew Warren, December 2012; Clare Callahan and Paula Jeannet, August 2013; and Craig Breaden, Paula Jeannet, 2015-2023.
Accessions represented in this collection guide: 2003-0229, 2007-0029, 2007-0069, 2008-0040, 2008-0276, 2011-0012, 2012-0040, 2012-0043, 2012-0098, 2014-0212, 2016-0031, 2017-0094, 2018-0040, 2019-0148, 2020-0075, 2021-0161, and 2023-0003.
