To Remember a Vanishing World

Draffus Lamar Hightower, 1899-1993, spent most of his life in Barbour County, Alabama. For many years he was the owner of a Chevrolet dealership, but he had another occupation as well. From his youth, he was fascinated with photography, and for fifty years he experimented with the craft both technically and artistically. Hightower, while participating fully in the twentieth century, was also acutely aware of the passing of the heritage of the last one. From the early 1920s to the late '60s, he made thousands of negatives of people, events, landscapes, objects, and buildings in Barbour County, all of which were being swept along by the coming of new times. By the 1960s, he had created a nearly unbelievable record of the life of the county during a period of profound change, of a vanishing world, if you will. He shot what interested him, or sometimes what friends and family asked him to record - everything from birthday parties to the demolition of historic buildings, so that future generations would not forget the world of their forebears. It was a world he loved.