5/26/11 It is after dark when I get to Baptist Town and everyone is out, enjoying a respite from the oppressive heat. All the boys are on the corner by Hoover’s store, gambling, drinking and smoking as usual. They all want their picture made and some yell louder than others to get my attention so it becomes a sort of yelling match, “No Matt, over here!” A couple of them jokingly ask, “Lettin’ that afro grow, Matt?” I wander to the corner of Young and Pelican, making my way around the block as usual and stopping to see who was posted up there. A group of kids played in the street and quickly ran over to me, clamoring for a photograph. The group of children grows larger and more raucous, eventually drifting away from the corner, towards the house next door. As I try to interact with the children, make pictures in the dark, show them the images on the back of the camera and answer questions I am fairly disconnected from everything else around me, other than the occasional nagging sensation of being hit with a rock. I figure it’s just a kid acting shitty but after the fourth or fifth time I say to no one in particular, “Please stop throwing rocks” and as the words come out of my mouth I turn to see a fat little girl standing off to the side as she lets one fly in my direction. My best guess in the moment is that she wants attention, so I ask, “Do you want me to make your picture?” but she shakes her head and runs off. That clues me in to the woman sitting on the porch who had been egging her, and maybe other children on. She begins to yell at me, “Fuck you, man, get out of here.” “I’m sorry,” I respond, utterly mortified and confused. I stick my hand out to her by way of apology. “I don’t want your hand,” she says and I decide to walk away. By the time I make it to the corner some of the boys have come up to her to see what is going on, “Man, fuck that nigga!” she yells in my direction. I decide to just keep walking. As I stroll down Pelican trying to repair my hurt feelings I growl to myself, “Suck it up, not everyone’s gonna like you, motherfucker.” I sit down on El’s stoop by myself, the dark green glow of the streetlights bathing her corner. Though I know El and Jabari are just inside and Nikki and Dominique are across the street, I retreat into myself. My wife, Melissa, calls to say goodnight and we speak for a minute or two.  “Be careful,” she implores me, as a dark car rolls slowly by where I am sitting. I can feel the stare from the other side of the tinted glass. Already on edge, I eye it warily. Just a few minutes later Winky pulls up at his house and I walk over to his car. He opens the door and looks at me without turning his head, a brown-bagged beer in his lap. He tells me the boys called him to tell him what happened. “Don’t worry, she were pissed off before you got there. She’ll be cool next time she see you,” he assures me. 

5/28/11 I walk over to E’s and knock on the door. J is on the phone but he lets me in and I stand in the dining room smoking a cigarette while he sits on the freezer in the corner, bathed in window light. After he gets off the phone he tells me that one of the boys from the corner set him up and stole 2 oz. from a stash spot the night before while he slept, and beat the old dog that is chained on the back porch. “That’s some hate shit,” he says, trying to figure out what to do. He has a mind to retaliate and be done with it. I know he’s got it in him, that he’s not afraid of the time he might catch. “That’s some bullshit, but it ain’t worth it,” I tell him. We talk about it for a while and he chats with friends on the phone, venting, trying to stay cool. Tempers are always quick around here but especially when the temperatures begin to soar in the late spring and throughout the summer. Eventually E gets back home and sits down on the couch of their darkened living room. “Matt, go get me a beer,” she says. “Alright, I could go for one too,” I say and walk around to Hoover’s store to grab a couple brown-bagged Millers. When I get back she is talking with J and we crack open our beers and just talk for a while. “To tell you the truth I really hate he’s selling,” she says, but they’ve got to make money somehow. “I ain’t had any money since I was disabled in 2006,” she tells me, and as for getting ripped off, “It’s all in the game and you’re gonna lose more than you win.” I encourage J to stay cool and tell him I’ll check in later and head back to the hotel.

5/24/11 When on the road I find that certain pleasures are limited. My ability to enjoy food dwindles dramatically, sleep is fitful. There are pleasures I derive from meeting a new person that I connect with, or the act of being in the moment when I am making pictures. Maybe the fact that today almost lacked that is what made it seem so slow, so painful. Whereas everything in Baptist Town follows a cyclical rhythm of chaos, the lives of others in Greenwood seem to be contained in sterile and well-organized spheres of work and home, with little in between. Today on the recommendation of several people I twice visit Robert E. Lee Drive, on the outskirts of Greenwood, to witness a suburban wonderland of enormous dwellings and well-watered lawns. It boggles me. I want desperately to encounter someone, but every person I see is at such a distance, across an enormous barrier of a yard. Earlier in the day when I pass through all I find are yard maintenance crews and contractors working on homes. It feels like an idyllic ghost town, other than the soothing rhythm of the sprinklers.  

It is becoming clear to me that I need to approach this side of town as if it were a completely separate project, though the two will (and must) intersect at some point. The two worlds are too different for the same approach to work. I am still searching for that person who will be the key to this side of the community. 

5/28/11 – Traffic is snarled on the street in front of the Civic Center so I park across from it near an abandoned building and cross the highway to get to the other side. Eventually I find where Scooter’s family is sitting and I come to say hi to them briefly before looking for a spot where I can post up and wait for the graduates to walk by. I find the entrance the 120 or so 2011 graduates of Greenwood High School will walk through. The color guard wait for their moment by the doors and I am finally able to work a scene – the only time this happens the whole trip. Everything else feels like glances, moments snagged in passing. After the procession of graduates makes their way through the doorway I begin moving, looking for angles to see from. Three times I am stopped by security, teachers, officials at the event inquiring as to my credentials. “I’m working on a book project about Greenwood,” I tell them. “Well you almost got bounced,” the cop responds, but leaves me alone. The graduation ceremony is full of joy and excitement. Scooter graduates with honors, despite his tumultuous home life that includes his father’s current incarceration.

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Matt Eich is a photographer who is based in Norfolk, Virginia.  His project, “Sin and Salvation in Baptist Town” began in April 2010 as an editorial assignment for AARP Bulletin. Since then he has returned on his own and with support from the crowdfunding platform Emphas.is, a National Geographic Innovation in Storytelling Grant, and an Aaron Siskind Fellowship.  He is a Founding Member of LUCEO Images.