Alonzo Jordan worked for forty years as a photographer in
Jasper, Texas, a small town that was little known until the brutal
murder there of a forty-nine-year-old African American named James
Byrd by three white males on June 7, 1998. While Jordan died in
1984, his photographs offer new insight into the social and
cultural milieu in which Byrd grew up and spent his entire life,
but perhaps, more enduringly, illuminate the intrinsic power of the
image to shape perception. Jordans photographs are windows into an
unseen world. A barber by trade, he took up photography to fill
what he perceived as a need in his community. He understood the
ways the photographic image could imbue its subject with a greater
sense of meaning and bolster self-esteem. Historian Alan Governar
has been recovering and documenting the work of African American
photographers for more than a decade. Working with Jordans widow,
he has preserved the thousands of negatives and prints that Jordan
produced over the course of his career. Jasper, Texas, which
accompanies an exhibition at the International Center of
Photography, presents a selection of Jordans work, documenting the
everyday life of several generations of Jaspers African American
residents.