Photos by Margo Newmark Rosenbaum
When I first met with George Mitchell, he recommended that I get in touch with a friend of his in Athens, Georgia, named Art Rosenbaum. On my first visit with Art, he took me to the University of Georgia’s archive of special collections, where he had donated the field recordings he had started making in the 1950s. After several conversations, Art and I set out on the massive undertaking of listening to all of the music he had recorded across five decades. Several months into the process, it dawned on me that Art had been present when each of these recordings was made. Later, it would also strike me that his wife, Margo, had been there, too — documenting the performances with her camera. The box set we produced, “Art of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum,” won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album of 2008. The music on Art’s tapes was brought to life with the help of Margo’s photographs, which were reproduced in the box set’s accompanying book.
— Lance Ledbetter
Doc and Lucy Barnes with Mavis Moon and Children, Athens, Georgia, 1977. Pictured in header image above: Elizabeth Cotten, Iowa City, 1976
Margo Newmark Rosenbaum earned her BFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and her MA in Painting at the University of Iowa. Her photography centering on Georgia traditions was widely seen in Folk Visions and Voices, a touring exhibition that was shown in many Southern museums and at the Razor Gallery in New York. Her photographs on musical and other subjects have been widely exhibited and published in The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Old-Time Herald.
“I really like to think of using the camera as drawing with light, as I would charcoal on paper,” she writes in her book, Drawing With Light: Photographs by Margo Newmark Rosenbaum. “I try to express something important with every image. There are so many problems; we need to remind ourselves that life has many positive moments, and I often try to reveal those in my work. On the other hand, I often detect a moodiness in my work, something below the surface of what is being looked at.”
Mabel Cawthorn, Carnesville, Georgia, 1979
Cecil Barfield, Bronwood, Georgia, 1988
Lawrence McKiver of the McIntosh County Shouters, St. Simons Island, Georgia, 1980
Porter Herald, Boone County, Kentucky, 1976
Three Generations of Skillet Lickers: Gordon, Russ, and Phil Tanner, Dacula, Georgia, 1977
Easter Sunday Foot Washing, Pilgrim Rest Primitive Baptist Church, Oglethorpe, Georgia, 1978
Lawrence McKiver, Georgia Sea Islands Festival, St. Simons Island, 1983
Neal Pattman, Athens, Georgia, 1980
Precious Bryant and Her Son, Tony, Talbotton, Georgia, 2006
Maude Thacker Recording Her Ballads, Tate, Georgia, 1980
Howard Finster and Kids on Trampoline at Paradise Garden, Summerville, Georgia, 1984
Jake Staggers and Family, Toccoa, Georgia, 1981
Margo Newmark Rosenbaum was born in Los Angeles in 1939. Over the course of many years, she has collaborated with her husband, Art Rosenbaum, in documenting American traditional music. Her photographs have been a part of touring exhibitions, and have been published in books and newspapers, found in archives and private collections, and featured in documentaries and CD projects. Rosenbaum was a featured photographer in The Georgia Review and was awarded the L. David Dwinell Award for Excellence in Visual Arts for a painting at the 45th Juried Exhibition at Lyndon House Art Center, Athens, Georgia, in 2020. Recently, she has been actively photographing in New York City. She resides and works in Athens.
