The Unpainted South

Songs and poems by William P. Baldwin

Photographs by Selden B. Hill

The Unpainted South: Carolina’s Vanishing World features the photographs of Selden B. Hill and the songs and poems of William P. Baldwin, both of McClellanville, S.C.  This book of poetry, songs and photographs is a tribute to the faded glory of South Carolina’s rural past. It features haunting images of abandoned farmhouses, leaning tobacco barns, and boarded up redbrick towns of another era in Lowcountry South Carolina. Combined with powerful verse, these images inspire an appreciation for the often-overlooked region that is withering away.

Softcover, Arts & Culture

$28.95

Out of stock

SKU: 978-1-929647-11-8-1 Category: Tag:

The Unpainted South: Carolina’s Vanishing World features the photographs of Selden B. Hill and the songs and poems of William P. Baldwin, both of McClellanville, S.C.  This book of poetry, songs and photographs is a tribute to the faded glory of South Carolina’s rural past. It features haunting images of abandoned farmhouses, leaning tobacco barns, and boarded up redbrick towns of another era in Lowcountry South Carolina. Combined with powerful verse, these images inspire an appreciation for the often-overlooked region that is withering away.
Songs and poems by William P. Baldwin
Photographs by Selden B. Hill

About the Author

william baldwin headshot

A lifelong resident of the South Carolina Lowcountry, William P. Baldwin is an award- winning novelist, poet, biographer and historian. He graduated from Clemson University with a BA in History and an MA in English. He ran a shrimp boat for nine years then built houses, but the principle occupation of his life has been writing.

His works include Charleston, Charleston Impressions, Daytrips from Charleston, Plantations of the Lowcountry, Lowcountry Plantations Today (all with architectural photographer N. Jane Iseley), and the oral histories Mrs. Whaley and her Charleston Garden and Heaven is a Beautiful Place. The screenplay for the latter earned him a Silver Remy at the Houston Film Festival. For its depiction of Southern race relations, his novelThe Hard to Catch Mercy won the Lillian Smith Award. He collaborated with photographer V. Elizabeth Turk onMantelpieces of the Old South and wrote the text for chef Charlotte Jenkins’ Gullah Cuisine.

Done with photographer Selden Hill and published in 2011, The Unpainted South won the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Gold Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. The follow up collection, These Our Offerings,earned a second Benjamin Franklin award.

His writing has also appeared in Charleston, Garden and Gun, Southern Living, Victoria, Veranda and Southern Accents magazines.

About the Photographer

selden hill headshot

Selden B. Hill is a photographer, pen and ink artist, historian, and the founding director of The Village Museum at McClellanville, S.C. In earlier years, he worked as a type setter and layout artist, played a lot of pool, and sold a lot of furniture, and in the opinion of his friends each occupation, in its own way, has helped to make him a better photographer. As museum director, he’s offered encouragement and employment to both photographers and writers and curated many photography shows. Along with Susan Hoffer McMillan he is the author of the photography collection McClellanville and the St. James Santee Parish published in 2006. He still spends his free time exploring the less traveled paths of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Nothing gives him greater pleasure than stumbling upon the perfect photographic subject: a derelict tobacco barn framed by live oaks, with white puffy clouds overhead, and dark streaming shadows in the foreground.