CV Oraien Catledge (American, 1928 – 2015) was born and raised in Tutwiler, a small town in the Mississippi Delta that he described succinctly: “Cotton grew to the edge of the town in every direction. You knew the people around you, had sat on th

CV

Oraien Catledge (American, 1928 – 2015) was born and raised in Tutwiler, a small town in the Mississippi Delta that he described succinctly: “Cotton grew to the edge of the town in every direction. You knew the people around you, had sat on their front porch swings, could name the pictures on their parlor walls.” After receiving his Bachelor’s degree in 1954, he began work with the Mississippi Department of Public Welfare, substituting for short-term vacancies of other personnel across the state and later administering a small county welfare office. In 1969, Catledge and his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he became the southeastern regional consultant for the American Foundation for the Blind. In the late 1970s, he learned to use a camera and pursued his newfound passion intensely, despite his own visual impairments caused by an undiagnosed case of malaria he had contracted as a child. Up until his passing in 2015, Catledge took thousands of photographs, but his focus was primarily the residents of Cabbagetown, a place that undoubtedly transformed his way of seeing.