Teri Tynes, freelance writer, on Phil Moody
Excerpted from Art & Design Faculty ONE exhibition catalogue, Winthrop University Galleries, 2001

In photographing his subjects, Phil Moody says that what’s important to him is not the medium itself but “what’s before me” – the human subject. It’s also the “sense of time and history, the pride, the accumulation of skill values, “he notes, that are universal. “However, these qualities are intangible,” Moody reflects,“ and hard to deal with in photography.” The photographer finds that it is these human qualities that motivate him. While he admires the work of early documentary photographers such as Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and Paul Strand, Moody departs from that tradition by making images that he describes as “elegiac.” These photographers of an earlier era worked to expose the facts of hunger or poverty in order to spearhead reform, but Moody’s purpose is necessarily different. His work can turn poetic and sorrowful as it documents a world and a way of life that is quickly passing. Moody is best known for his images of manual labor, particularly in the textile industry.