Transfer of Grace: Images of the Lowcountry [With 7 X 7 Print] - Tapa dura

The pages of Transfer of Grace carry some of the most mysterious, meditative, lyrical images ever created of the South Carolina Lowcountry.Photographer Gary Geboy has a gift for capturing the spirit of a place, those images that might easily pass us by. To look at his black and white photographs is to glimpse the fleeting presence of places that are passing out of currency – some through neglect, some through development.Geboy has an eye for the overlooked dimensions of this rare and beautiful place – a weathered sign pointing to a praise house, a path worn by hundreds of years of foot-born traffic, the massive branch of a live oak, a broken front porch, a dock in the reeds.Geboy's images give one pause to linger, as do the words of author Teresa Bruce, whose writing voice is as captivating as Geboy's images.The rare partnership between Geboy and Bruce is an homage to the hidden aspects of this mysterious Lowcountry world, a melding that allows for its own transfer of grace.Author Pat Conroy describes the bookas one of the most beautiful meditations on the South Carolina Lowcountry that has ever come his way. “It feels delicate and sacramental in nature – a love poem to the salt marshes, bays and rivers that define this extraordinary place. The photographs are priceless and the prose is surpassingly fine.” If photographs could breathe, the images in Transfer of Grace capture the moment between the inhalation and the exhalation. They will take your breath away.

In the sticky heat of a South Carolina Lowcountry summer, horizons are swallowed by humidity. The curves of creeks and heavy skies blend and fade in ethereal ascension. Distances distort and textures soften in air too thick to breathe.But on a clear night, under a full moon at high tide, the water shimmers, a sideways-slipping sea. Pinch yourself to stay awake, for dreams can harbor no more liquid a mystery than the Lowcountry. Poetry can pattern no more regular a meter, song no more flowing a rhythm. But photography can conjure up the essence of a place, the shifting layers of light, the fleeting presence of its past, and transfer its grace.It began long ago, this softly shared and gentle grace. Native peoples left shell-ring maps to the natural treasures of the Lowcountry and rhythmic names for later tongues to try: Ashepoo, Combahee and Yemassee. Enslaved Africans brought with them and passed down arts like sweetgrass basket weaving and soulful song. Plantation owners, too, bequeathed a beauty to the Lowcountry - live oaks line the avenues to antebellum mansions. Traditions mingled and adapted. What is left is often the least tangible and most tenuous of tenders. Wade into the work of Gary Geboy and the words of Teresa Bruce through the pages of Transfer of Grace. Save a place for the Lowcountry in your soul.