Review
A lavish new coffee-table book that captures the Volunteer State at its photogenic best.
From Civil War swords and the snowdusted Smoky Mountains to fiddlers, apple orchards and close-ups of ancient hands stitching a red, white and blue quilt or snapping a mess of garden green beans, the book has a folksy charm.
University of Tennessee fans should be ecstatic over the two-page spread devoted to Neyland Stadium as it erupts in a sea of orange and white on game day in Knoxville.
The state's rich musical heritage gets a nod with portraits of Memphis blues singer Blind Mississippi Morris strumming a guitar inside a garish blue room at Ernestine and Hazel's in the South Main district of Bluff City, the Fisk Jubilee Signers performing in Nashville and a country singer enjoying his moment in the spotlight on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. -- Nashville Business Journal, November 1997
I've always suspected that Tennessee and its people and places are special, but Robin the lensman and Barry the essayist have offered up positive proof in their photographs and prose.
"Awesome" isn't a word I normally use -- I figure it is overused enough by the young and would-be young -- so I'll settle for a suitable synonym, to wit, "breathtaking" to describe Robin's portraitlike pictures and Barry's accompanying text.
I'll stop right here because I am incapable of adequately describing the warmth and beauty of this body of work that takes us from a Chattanooga carousel carver to Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville and the cotton market in Memphis. -- Chattanooga Times, Sept. 29, 1997
Surely this season's premier gift book, THE TENNESSEANS: A People Revisited is a handsome union of photographs and words conveying the essence of our state. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Robin Hood and East Tennessee writer Barry Parker have teamed up again to produce an impressive over-sized volume that not only captures the heritage, beauty and rich culture of our state, but evokes intense emotions in the viewer. -- Nashville Banner, Sept. 25, 1997
THE TENNESSEANS: A People Revisited won two Ben Franklin Awards in this year's national competition. The book won best coffee table/gift book and was judged best in the three-color cover design category. Judges' comments ranged from "stunningly beautiful book" to "amazing cover image." THE TENNESSEANS bested 200 other entries in those categories for the double win. Only one other book, among the 1,500 entrants in all categories, won two Ben Franklin Awards.
THE TENNESSEANS was also honored as one of three finalists in the Small Press Awards best coffee table/gift book category. -- Awards received
THE TENNESSEANS: A People Revisited captures our state's distinct cultural essence and diverse landscape. Stirring essays and stunning photographs of our legendary land will intoxicate natives and non-natives alike. -- Southern Living, February 1998
The volume comes two decades after the publication of the authors' first book, THE TENNESSEANS: A People and Their Land, and Hood and Parker find Tennessee changed by the intervening years.
As they explain in the introduction, "There is less countryside, for one thing: Pastures at the edges of towns have grown into subdivisions; sleepy stretches of road are now busy strips."
But as Hood's photographs testify, there's still plenty of natural beauty to be found in Tennessee. And, as the book notes, not all changes have been negative: "Big cities have rediscovered their riverfronts, town squares have been rejuvenated. .. there is more fine art in our museums, more blues on Beale Street," (Memphis, February 1998). -- From the Publisher
This beautiful book portrays our lives and where we live in heartfelt essays and full-color images. Tennesseans have fallen in love with it. -- Chattanooga Free Press, Oct. 1, 1997
About the Author
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Robin Hood is a fifth-generation Tennessean. While his advertising and corporate assignments take him around the world, his images of Tennessee most dramatically capture the heritage and values of a people.
Hood studied painting at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. After serving as a lieutenant in the US Army in Vietnam, he joined the Chattanooga Free Press. His photograph of a legless Vietnam veteran pensively watching an Armed Forces Day parade in Chattanooga won Hood the Pulitzer Prize in 1977, making him the only Tennessee photographer so honored.
Hood left the Free Press in 1980 to photograph Tennessee for a book project of Governor Lamar Alexander -- THE TENNESSEANS: A People and Their Land. Several other collections of Hood's work have been published in the United States and Japan.
He has received numerous honors for advertising photography, including awards from Communications Arts, New York Art Directors Club and the Ad Federation. Hood lives in Franklin, TN with his wife, Peggy, and daughters, Farrar, Nicole and Lauren.
Barry Parker has written about his home state as a journalist and an author. A Chattanooga native, he graduated from Vanderbilt University with an English degree in 1967 and began a newspaper career with the Chattanooga Free Press.
As a writer for United Press International, Parker covered civil rights activities in the Deep South. He later worked for the Raleigh News and Observer and returned to the Chattanooga Free Press.
In 1980, Parker collaborated with Robin Hood on the book, THE TENNESSEANS: A People and Their Land. He later served as vice president of community relations for a Georgia health care system and was a three-time winner of the national Touchstone Award for writing in the health care field.
Parker is author of several organizations histories and editor of a nationally distributed travel magazine. He lives on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga with his wife, LeNet, and sons, Adam and Jordan.
