Camy Truck with Jesus

Camy Truck with Jesus is part of Burk Uzzle’s Southbound photography project. The series explores life in the South, especially in rural Appalachia. Uzzle photographed this landscape in southwestern Virginia, near the North Carolina border. The photograph shows everyday life through local buildings, expressions of faith, and community traditions.

I love to look around me, I rejoice in the opportunity to respond to life through photography. So delighted to see, to be alive and feeling well and free to take pictures. I feel most challenged by the ordinary, the average, the common experience. Not surprising considering my ordinary, average frame of reference. There is nothing I can pretend to, nothing special ever happened in my childhood except photography, to which I have been totally committed since the age of fourteen.

Burk Uzzle

Uzzle is a North Carolina native who has lived all over the state. He began his career in photography at a young age. He worked for local newspapers before he was hired to work as a photographer for LIFE magazine at the age of 23. Now in his 80s, Uzzle has spent most of his life working as a professional photographer. 

Some of Uzzle’s most iconic documentary photographs include scenes from the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination and funeral of Martin Luther King Jr., and the 1969 Woodstock festival. He is also known for his portraits of small towns and everyday life in the American South. He lives and works in North Carolina.

North Carolina is home. I identify with the culture, the landscape, and both the warmth of the people and their eccentricities.

Burk Uzzle