About the Website
This website is a community-driven component to the book, The Wealth of Nothing: Rural Southern Life through the Lens of William Van Auken Greene. Greene was an itinerant, one-armed photographer whose archive of 2,000 photographs of Horry county and the Aynor community during the 1930s and 40s. While Greene’s negatives are preserved in the Horry County Museum in Conway, South Carolina, his records of the people or places in these photographs are lost. Over the years, several community volunteers have waded through the archive to identify the faces of their relatives, friends and neighbors. Most individuals have not been identified, and some individuals have been labeled under multiple names.
This website is an attempt to augment access to these photographs, as well as catalog the names of the individuals in them. Our hope is that this website serves as more of a digital archive, but a place to share memories of the places and memories, to renew connections long forgotten.
This website will begin with featuring 90 photographs published in the book. We will continue to add more of the nearly 2,000 photos of varying resolutions over 2015. If there is a particular image that you are looking for, please visit the Horry County Museum (805 Main St., Conway, SC 29526) to view a DVD of the complete archive.
About the Book
The Wealth of Nothing features the photographs, poetry and portraits created by the one-armed itinerant photographer, William Van Auken Greene, during his travels around the town of Aynor and surrounding Horry County
Photographing between the 1930s and 40s, Greene’s collected photographs provide a glimpse into small town American life. Greene hitched rides and walked around the back roads of Horry county, snapping portraits of any resident who would pay a quarter, and provided many of the residents the only photographs of their loved ones, prized possessions and favorite gathering places. Through his lens, families paused from harvesting tobacco, communities came together to raise a barn, and parents clutched their sons in uniform.
This handcrafted project combines interviews, newspaper and census clippings, and Greene’s poetry with high-quality photographic restorations to create a portrait of the small town people and values that Greene carefully documented. Students from history, photography and design worked alongside the Horry County Museum, who houses the collection of Greene’s negatives and photos, to create this work.
The publication is the second installment of the The Athenaeum Press’ chapbook series, the result of close collaboration between the project initiator (Eldred “Wink” Prince, Jr.) and a student production team (history team Nick Barton, Grace Cox, Nick McKinney; photographers Amber Eckersley and Jason Wysong; design lead Collin Oliva).
About the Press
The Athenaeum Press is a student-driven publishing lab that focuses on telling regional stories in innovative ways. Located in the Thomas W. and Robin W. Edwards College of Humanities & Fine Arts at Coastal Carolina University, The Press is entering into its fourth year of production. The Press offers students hands-on opportunities within the publication process, from project-based historical research to exhibit design. Students determine the form of the project based on the subject, and we constantly are seeking new and innovative ways to produce projects. While many of our projects have extensive academic research, we produce content that is accessible, engaging and challenging.
Our projects are organic to this region, but we draw our regional map widely. From retelling the story of 19th century explorer from the northeast as he travelled down the Lowcountry waterways to the spirituals that emanated from the South Carolina sea islands, the sheer diversity of the stories within this region hold national significance as treasures, but are of local import. Learn more about the Athenaeum Press’ projects, news and mission at theathenaeumpress.com.
About the Horry County Museum
The Horry County Museum was established in 1979 and opened its doors to the public in 1981. The Museum focuses on the history, pre-history, and natural history of Horry County, S.C., and educates the public about these subjects through exhibits, outreach programs, and events. In 2009, the Museum opened the L. W. Paul Living History Farm. The Farm is a recreation of life on a one horse family farm between the years of 1900-1955. Visitors to the farm can experience what life was like in a farm community during those years and attend quarterly events at the Farm. In 2014, the Museum moved into the renovated 1905 Burroughs School. The school is on the National Register of Historic Places. The move includes increased exhibits, a freshwater aquarium featured on Animal Planet’s hit reality show “Tanked”, and a 600 seat auditorium that hosts public presentations and programs. Learn more about the Horry County Museum at horrycountymuseum.org.