Withers (1922-2007) was a professional photographer in Memphis. “Pictures tell the story’’ was the motto on his business card and the sign outside his studio. Over the course of more than half a century, Withers made an estimated 5 million exposures. He took photographs to make a living, not to make art or record history - though both those things happened with some frequency. Withers shot debutante balls, ballgames, nightclub performances, crime scenes: whatever people would pay to see, whatever interested him, or, ideally, both.
Memphis was a cultural crossroads in the postwar years. Roughly midway between Chicago and New Orleans, it was the city closest to the Mississippi Delta, the gateway from the Deep South to the Upper South.
Its strategic location had helped make the city a musical hub. A goodly chunk of “Pictures Tell the Story’’ is given over to music in Memphis. There are three other photographs featuring B.B. King. In one of them, he and his band stand alongside the length of his tour bus. Demonstrating what an eye he had for composition, Withers uses horizontality to maximum effect. We see Ike and Tina Turner in performance. Brook Benton sings in front of a stage curtain bearing an enormous image of Elvis. It’s the sort of odd detail Withers had an eye for. That rippling Elvis is nowhere near as odd, though, as the sight of Howlin’ Wolf standing in the middle of a grocery store holding a guitar. How many Green Stamps did a shopper need to get him to play “Smokestack Lightning’’?
