J.C. Coovert Photo Galleries
Click any of the Galleries below to see the full images!
Cirkut
Cotton
Coovert's panoramic photographs are held in the Library of Congress among other institutions. They are often entitled "Cirkut" photos, which refers to the Cirkut camera, first manufactured in 1905. Coovert used the "Cirkut" as well as other banquet cameras out of doors. Perched on a 15 foot tripod used to photograph conventions in Memphis, Coovert directed vast farm scenes in the countryside along the Mississippi River, as the workers, bosses, and animals waited patiently for the slow exposures. He retouched landscapes to tell a dramatic story of cotton.
Cotton figures in the very first mention we have of Coovert as a photographer: a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889. The medallion given to him and his partner Patorno for "Best State Views," showed an image of an overflowing basket of cotton. Coovert returned again and again to the subject of cotton: its transportation, growing, harvesting, and especially the workers in the field.
Coovert's view is at times celebratory and fanciful, and at times respectful and straightforward . His vision went throughout the world and established for millions the very idea of the cotton South.
Floods
Mississippi River floods were a way of life. Inundations, occurring over thousands of years, deposited the rich alluvial soil that nourished the cotton plant. The soil was so rich that Deltans said "even a fencepost will sprout leaves."
The floods also caused much hardship and loss for the plantation owners, farmers and tenants. "High water" sometimes stayed for weeks, spreading sickness and waste among humans and animals. Spring floods also occurred in the middle of the crucial planting season.
Health Department
Pictures from the Memphis/Shelby County Health Department showed the "visiting nurse" program as well as efforts to introduce "sanitary" conditions to dairies and farms. There are also pictures of modern garbage incineration. Many of the images appear to have been made with the aid of artificial lighting in the 1910's. They resemble the social documentarian Jacob Riis who photographed immigrants in New York's slums. Coovert's pictures were rescued from a yard sale in the 1970s by Mildred Hicks, a Health Department employee.
Portraits
When J. C. Coovert died in 1937 he was said to have 710,000 negatives , the vast majority, no doubt, portraits. A sticker for the back of his prints says, "Only studio in Memphis with an elevator" while located at 63 N. Main. Surely, that was for the convenience of his portrait clients. His last studio was located in Brys Department Store, where he met the carriage trade that was his clientele. We have very few of the portraits -- though the pictures of his niece Mary, made in the 1890s, are outstanding in their liveliness and inventiveness.
Steamboats
When J. C. Coovert came to the Yazoo/Mississippi Delta he entered an "interior frontier," an inland archipelago surrounded by water. Settlement before the Civil War existed only along the rivers and their largest tributaries. Overland transportation was nearly impossible in the swampy interior. Steamboats provided the only practical means of transport. And yet, the cotton industry developed so swiftly in the Delta that the Mississippi Valley and Yazoo Railroad skirted the Mississippi River by the 1890s, signaling the end to the era of the paddlewheel steamboats.
Sunny Side Plantation
Coovert created a photo album about Sunny Side Plantation, Ark., in 1893. Its owner, New York banker, railroad magnate, and land developer Austin Corbin, created a model of industrial efficiency. Faced with scarce labor, he imported immigrants from northern Italy. The plantation had a railroad, sawmill, and several steamers, in addition to the enterprises commonly found on cotton plantations -- a gin, stores, livestock, and warehouses. It has been documented in Shadows Over Sunnyside, by Jeannie Whayne.