Join us at The State Library on Friday, November 8, at 3:00 PM to meet the author and photographer of Undertones: Gifts of a Southern Tide. Registration is required.
Undertones: Gifts of a Southern Tide is the winner winner of the 2021 New York City Big Book Award as a Distinguished Favorite in Photography and a finalist for best book of photography by Foreword Reviews. It is available online from Joggling Board Press.
“Listen. It’s low tide. Oysters spit. A blue heron flushes. Pistol shrimp snap their claws, and the water crackles. A fish thumps a school of baitfish at the surface. That’s how the salt marsh speaks. It’s the soup of life moving around grass and pilings. Sounds you can almost smell.”
“Undertones offers a window to the southern coast that draws from the places that sheltered, revived and raised us. In this book, Mom and I share the uncommon gifts in each uncommon moment, a look deep inside what we may otherwise pass by on foot or boat. Mom’s shutter clicks and my observations, one page at a time, seek the interconnectivity of these estuaries.”
— Douglas Cutting
The book has garnered rave reviews from Southern luminary Clyde Edgerton and essayist David Gessner.
“I was captivated by the photographs. Douglas Cutting is one of the best writers I have ever taught. I believe this book could become a classic.”
— Clyde Edgerton, Author of five of The New York Times notable books of the year
“This is a book soaked in salt. The seasons move through the pages, storms blow through it, and the tides rise and fall. It is a world of movement where barnacles seethe, water pulses, shadows lengthen and nets are thrown. Your guides to this world see more than most of us. They look deeply, below the surface and the human grid, into the mystery. The images and sentences, made by the mother and son, work together to let us enter this older shadowed world. They slow us down and let us see the poetry of old docks, encrusted driftwood, and human artifacts sand-stained and made primal.”
—David Gessner, Award winning author and essayist
Presenters
Award-winning fine art photographer Nan Young Carey is a purist when it comes to her art. Her commitment to analog photography (she loads actual film in her camera) allies with her penchant for doing whatever it takes to capture an image, whether wading knee-deep through a swamp, scrunching down low in pluff mud or waiting hours for the light to hit just right. Afterward, she goes into her studio darkroom, developing each print by hand. Her work has been exhibited in numerous juried, invitational and solo shows in the Carolinas and Georgia. Nan lives in Charlotte with her husband, Brooks.
Award-winning writer Douglas Cutting is co-founder of Bluewing Properties, a land brokerage company that assists clients with rural land investments or “getaway” places that lean toward outdoor recreation, hunting, harvesting and conservation. “We fully understand not just the desire, but the intrinsic need to get away, to find peace, to hunt, grow, harvest, share and observe in a wilder space.” His writings have appeared in Garden & Gun, Sporting Classics, Charleston Magazine, Gray’s Sporting Journal and others. He lives on Daniel Island with his wife and young son and daughter.
