'Life & the Art of Living'

Oct. 9—New York City photographers with deep Sampson County ties opened their "Life & the Art of Living" exhibit at the Sampson Arts Council on College St. in Clinton last week. Two of their projects currently are on display through Nov. 3 at the Victor R. Small House, and they are extending an invitation to community members to become subjects of their future artwork.

Robbie and Robert Bailey's family project consists of recreating old photographs in the same location with the same people present-day. It began with one of Robbie's father's photographs, but the Bailey couple wants to extend the project beyond their own family. "We will hopefully inspire someone who might have a lovely photo archive that we could work with so we could help them restore the old photos and then recreate them," Robbie offered.

The idea emerged before Robbie became a professional photographer when she found negatives from pictures of her father, a Clinton native, in a Tampa Nugget cigar box. She started asking all of the photographers she knew what she could do with them. "Everybody told me throw them away," she recounted. "Professional photographers that I knew in Raleigh looked at them. They're like, ah, you're never going to get anything out of these."

She tried taking the negatives to photo development shops, and they would laugh her out of the store. "So I literally had to go and learn how to print them myself and successfully."

Robbie, then a Pope, was determined. She had majored in radio and television broadcasting at N.C. State but found herself studying photography at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan in the mid-90s where she met her now husband Robert Bailey, a lecturer, who helped her develop her project. "Robert was more the teaching level, and he had been travelling in Bangladesh, so I leaned on him very hard for the technical prowess that I had not yet acquired."

Once she had achieved the glory of the printed negatives, Robbie wanted to go further. "I showed him, and I was like how do I add to this, what do I do? Because I loved these old ones, but what do we do to make it more relevant?"

They decided to recreate the photographs under modern-day circumstances and do their first exhibit in 1999 or 2000. "He kind of helped me brainstorm on the idea how to do the side by side and then physically came down here with me, before we were married, before we were even sweethearts, I think, and helped me set it up."

The Baileys collaborate on their personal documentary projects and environmental portraits. Their photographs have been published in the New York Times as well as being featured on The Today Show, The Discovery Channel, and NBC's Nightly News. The Baileys' fine art portraits have been exhibited in galleries all across the United States and Europe.

Robert noted how the couple plans to recreate their wedding photo that was taken on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City after their City Hall ceremony to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary this month. "I guess we gotta walk the walk," Robert commented. "That's to come."

Robbie spent all of her childhood weekends in Clinton until she went off to college. On her mother's side of the family, her grandmother also is from Clinton, her home having been located where the Popeyes on Sunset Avenue currently sits.

Robbie's family connection to Clinton is strong, and all of her recreated family photos are set in Sampson County. Those photos were recreated with no budget and during Robbie and Robert's sparingly free time over the years between full-time work, creative jobs and businesses. "We would have to fit it in during visits — quick summer visit, quick Christmas visit," Robbie said. "So to fit it in, there was never a lot of time. But now we're trying to redirect our energy back into it."

They want to expand the project to other families in Sampson County and beyond. "It's really a big part of why we decided to make this exhibition highlighting it," Robert remarked. "We are in a position to have more time and resources to further it, broadened it to not just our family."

But time is of the essence. The more time that goes by, the more that people and locations are lost that could have been part of recreating photographs. "That was another important motivation for us over the years to kind of get up and do this because we would come down and people were gone or houses were gone," Robert lamented. "So we were trying to get it as matching things as close as we could with the people while they're here."

Robbie followed up on his sentiment. "While we could because change, man. What is it, the old cliché? The only thing you can count on is change. And we're witnessing that over time. It was a high motivating factor."

Another part of the exhibit, timed to the opening of the N.C. state fair this month, is a group of photographs honoring the poultry competition at the fair. "We wanted them to look heroic. Look at the pride in their faces," Robbie beamed.

The competitors have dedicated years, decades, to their craft and can be credited with keeping their breeds of poultry alive. "Most of the commercial farming and produce that you see, they just want one kind of chicken — a chicken you can eat and they can make money on," she describes. "So this group of people, enthusiasts, that base their operations out of the N.C. state fair, they're keeping these breeds alive when the commercial industry would rather them just go off in the sunset."

Photographing chickens and roosters on-site at the fair proved to be a harrowing challenge but one with NYC studio level attention to detail, thanks to the current head of the poultry competition. "He literally opens like a beauty kit for chickens. Robert and I are sitting there going 'this is the coolest thing ever,'" Robbie exclaims. "So suddenly these chicken farmers turned into art directors and stylists right there in front of us. Don't you love it when people surprise you?"

Robbie and Robert hope to be surprised at where the expansion of their family project takes them. Those interested in participating don't necessarily have to have negatives to recreate photos. "Robbie does a lot of tech work with PhotoShop," Robert pointed out.

Robbie's technical expertise also facilitated the large exhibition prints, after at least a month of working her PhotoShop magic.

The opening night of the exhibit was well-attended and included a visit from Burk Uzzle, a Wilson, N.C. native who began his career selling pictures to newspapers and became the youngest photographer to ever be hired by Life Magazine. He took iconic photos of Woodstock '69, Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Jackie O. and now focuses his photography on Black Americans in Eastern North Carolina.

India K. Autry can be reached at 910-249-4617.