Louise Boyle - Photographs.

Louise Boyle (1910–2005) produced a significant body of work in 1937 documenting the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU) in Arkansas. She was not affiliated with the federal Farm Security Administration but worked independently at the request of union organisers. Using a Leica camera, she recorded meetings, union activity, living conditions, and agricultural labour among tenant farmers. Her photographs are preserved at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at Cornell University.

Boyle was part of a group of young socialists who assisted the STFU during the late 1930s. In Arkansas she photographed both African American and white sharecroppers at public gatherings, union meetings, in their homes, and in fields. Named individuals include Myrtle and Ben Lawrence, and her sequence from Parkin, Arkansas, documents a meeting addressed by Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas. Her work is characterised by systematic coverage of events and participants rather than isolated images.

In 1982 Boyle returned to Arkansas to photograph some of the same people and locations she had documented in 1937. This created a comparative record of continuity and change across a 45-year span. She also collaborated on written accounts, including a 1998 article for Southern Cultures about union member Myrtle Lawrence. The Kheel Center holds her original negatives, prints, and related correspondence, which provide both the photographic and contextual evidence of her long engagement with the subject.

Music
Trouble Stay from My Door
Roy Williams

Camera is on:
Thank you for all your support.

#louiseboyle #photographer #photography #stfu #arkansas #cotton #farming #usa #tentantfarmers #cottonfields