Muscadine Grape Arbor and Log Barn in Fog

Ed Croom

Archival pigment color print

H. 11¾; W. 18" image size
H. 21½; W. 25¾" framed

About the Artist

Dr. Ed Croom, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, earned his bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his doctorate in botany from North Carolina State University. As a botanist he documented traditional plant uses in the Southeastern United States by folk medicine users and practitioners before the contemporary living knowledge of the uses of the plants was lost. His Ethnobotany Field Work - involved the documentation of the medicinal and other traditional uses of plants in the Southeast by Lumbee, Catawba, Pee Dee, Waccama-Siouian, and Choctaw Indians.

This research was in conjunction with his work on Sustainable and Plant Derived Therapeutic Drugs. Producing the plant derived anti-malarial drug Artemisinin by cultivation of the plants for the World Health Organization and developing a sustainable cultivated supply system of the plant derived anti-cancer drug Taxol for the National Cancer Institute, USDA and Pharmaceutical Industry.

Another career highlight was his discovery of an extinct plant genus found in Water Valley, Mississippi. Croomiocarpon mississippiensis Stull, Manchester et Moore was named to honor his discovery of the new genus in the Icacinaceae, a plant family.

Croom started using photography as a documentation method in the 1960s for his scientific research. His approach to photographing Rowan Oak, however, has been through a fine arts lense. He spent over a decade photographing the land of Rowan oak before exhibiting, and then publishing a book of the works, in order to increase awareness of William Faulkner's cultivated landscape and woodlands, which he believes was a great love and inspiration to the author.

This photo is part of a collection of 18 photographs on Rowan Oak by Ed Croom in their permanent collection of the Federal Government photography collection on public display. Other artists in the Federal Building include Maude and Langdon Clay.

"Best of all, Ed Croom offers us what well may be the most beautiful, evocative image ever struck on Mr. Faulkner's place: a snowy panorama that captures woods and outbuildings under a pale winter sun." Howard Bahr, Review of The Land of Rowan Oak: An Exploration of Faulkner's Natural World, The Clarion Ledger, October 30, 2016.

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