Love, Daddy: Letters from My Father examines the complexities of
father-and-son relationships through letters and photographs.
Willie Morris wrote scores of letters to his only son, David Rae
Morris, from the mid-1970s until Willie's death in 1999. From David
Rae's perspective, his father was often emotionally disconnected
and lived a peculiar lifestyle, often staying out carousing well
into the night. But Willie Morris was an eloquent and accomplished
writer and began to write his son long, loving, and supportive
letters when David Rae was still in high school. An aspiring
photographer, David Rae was confused and befuddled by his father's
warring personalities and began photographing Willie using the
camera as a buffer to protect him and his emotions. The collection
begins in early 1976 and continues for more than twenty years as
David Rae moved about the country, living in New York,
Massachusetts, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Minnesota, before
finally settling in Louisiana. "All the while my father was writing
to me I somehow managed to save his letters," David Rae wrote. "I
left them in storage and in boxes and in piles of clutter on desks
and in basements. They were kind, offering a love that he found
difficult to express openly and directly. He simply was more
comfortable communicating through letters." The letters cover
topics ranging from writing, the weather, Willie's return to
Mississippi in 1980, the Ole Miss football season, and local town
gossip to the fleas on the dog to just life and how it's lived.
Likewise, the photographs are portraits, documentary images of
daily life, dinners, outings, and private moments. Together they
narrate and illuminate the complexities of one family relationship,
and how, for better or worse, that love endures the passage of
time.
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