A group of young boys in football jerseys and white helmets walking across a football field.

Game Time, Selma, AL, 2009

Artist Jerry Siegel (American, born 1958)

Date2009

Mediumarchival inkjet print

DimensionsImage: 11 × 17 inches (27.9 × 43.2 cm)
Sheet (Paper): 17 × 22 inches (43.2 × 55.9 cm)
Matted: 20 × 24 inches (50.8 × 61 cm)

Credit LineGift of Patti Siegel and Jeff Hathcoat.

Object number2019.7

On View

Not on view

Copyright© jerrysiegel.com. The images and text contained on this page are owned by Telfair Museums or used by the Museum with permission from the owners. Unauthorized reproduction, transmission or display of these materials is prohibited with the exception of items deemed “fair use” as defined by U.S. and international copyright laws.Label TextFootball and homecoming are two rites of passage when growing up in the South.The juxtaposition of these two photographs considers the sports-related rituals that bring people together and the traditions that still bear the weight of a painful history of discrimination. Game Time is a joyful image that shows young boys, mostly African American, in oversized football jerseys striding purposefully forward. Homecoming depicts a young white woman in blue antebellum hoop-style dress at the John Tyler Morgan Academy stadium, a school that was founded as a segregationist academy and named after a confederate general.The audience in front of her is overwhelmingly white. Both were taken in Selma, Alabama, a city remembered for the brutal attack of peaceful Civil Rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus bridge in 1965. Jerry Siegel, born and raised in Selma, is continuously drawn to his roots, and his Black Belt Color series explores the artist’s relationship with the region. As Siegel himself says,“This isn’t a definitive view of the ‘black belt’ region.This is a very, very tight focus—images of what I respond to based on how I grew up. Every picture tells a story… Text written for 'Youthful Adventures: Growing Up in Photography' on view September 18, 2020-April 18, 2021.

Collections