Changing Times of Oxford, Mississippi Spring 2021

Kathryn McCullouch

As a student in Dr. Wharton’s Documentary Photography class, our goal was to document change in the area we were in, so I began exploring Oxford and the University. As I traveled onto campus, Fraternity and Sorority Row revealed a mixture of old and new houses, with a few being torn down and re constructed. The campus was changing to accommodate for more students, and this change was evident around town as well. I then adventured into the Oxford Country Club and down Sisk Avenue, finding cleared land and construction companies hard at work to build new businesses and homes as Oxford continues to grow. There are many ways to interpret our class theme of change, and as I looked around my community, I could not stop seeing how the old elements of Oxford were changing to a new, more urban theme.

Kathryn McCullouch – I am a Junior Public Policy Leadership Major at the University of Mississippi. I am also pursuing a minor in Southern Studies, which lead me to the Documentary Photography class which I made this project for. This class has opened my eyes to a new way of photography, and how one image can tell an intricate story. Irving Penn once said, “I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That’s the curse of being a photographer.” I believe this relates directly to my work for our documentary photography class, in how I spent each week exploring things I had seen many times, but from a new angle and perspective that was almost mesmerizing.