Missouri State University photography professor Bruce West is author of a book of color photographs and stories of an eccentric couple and their home located near Vicksburg, Mississippi. KSMU’s Bailey Wiles speaks with West about his book.
Bruce West became a photographer to examine and explore the world of humanity in a way that no other medium could. West decided to use this spirit of exploration to set out on a photographic journey to document the American South and from there began a nineteen year period of photo documentation.
“Kind of by accident I drove past Margaret’s Grocery. It was an absolutely fabulous folk art creation. I thought I better stop and take some pictures, and I kept going back for 19 years.”
Margaret’s Grocery, in Vicksburg Mississippi, is the stunning backdrop for West’s book, The True Gospel Preached Here, and is home to owners, Reverend H.D. and Margaret Dennis, a couple in their eighties when West started his photography project. Reverend Dennis met and married Margaret, the then owner of Margaret’s Grocery, and told her he was going to turn her grocery into a palace.
“He started this construction building towers and arches and painting everything red, white, blue, and green and doing these folk art installation pieces. And he had all of these placards out with quotes from the Bible and things saying ‘the true gospel preached here’ which became the title of my book.”
Reverend Dennis was also a very religious man and wanted to use his folk art masterpiece to attract the intrigued highway driver to stop and talk with him.
“He was also a preacher, so it became his roadside attraction to pull people in so when they would stop, he could preach the good word to them.”
Attractions at Margaret’s Grocery included a large, rickety tower that Reverend Dennis had built himself and that housed his homemade version of the arch of the covenant and the Ten Commandments. Eventually, the city became so concerned about the safety of tourists that went up into the Reverend’s tower that they gave him an old school bus to turn into his chapel. When fascinated motorists stopped by to see the Reverend’s creation, they got a tour and also a little more than they bargained for.
“He had totally decorated the ceiling with all sorts of patterns of brightly colored molding and pompoms and plastic things hanging from the ceiling. So he would tour that and then finally he would take people to the church or the bus. They would sit in the pews, which were the old bus seats spray painted gold, and then he had his pulpit up at the front of the bus, so when he would start preaching and praying, he would be blocking the way for getting out of the bus.”
This photography project interested West for many reasons. One reason was because both Margaret and the Reverend had grown up in the time of segregation and he was interested in sharing their stories side by side with his photographs. Furthermore, the fact that the couple’s strong religious faith had supported them throughout their lives, in the good times and in the bad, was also something that West found fascinating.
“I was really interested as a photographer to document this totally unique place. I think at one time it was the major site of American folk art and architecture in the United States.”
West’s book ends with pictures from the funerals and gravesites of both the Reverend and his wife and the eventual decay that Margaret’s Grocery fell into with no one there to love and care for it as the couple once had.
West’s book has been receiving great reviews from both inside and outside the art world. Some of his photographs are now even featured in the Library of Congress.