Michael Cunningham gives us a peek under the brim of society

   To Michael Cunningham, a hat is never just a hat; it’s a life story. A hat speaks long before its wearer utters a word, and the many church hats currently on display and framed in pictures on the walls of HCC Dale Mabry’s Art Gallery are noisier than ever.

    Michael Cunningham’s Crowns Exhibit, currently on display until February 29th, showcases not just the hats, but the women under the hats, and the deep, cultural roots connecting them.

   Cunningham compares the exhibit to “sitting on the edge of a bed of a woman who is preparing for Sunday service… as you’re sitting there with her, she pulls out this old hat from a hatbox and she begins to tell you a story. Look at her face.

   Listen to her wisdom“. Maryland born photographer Michael Cunningham has enjoyed photography all of his life. As a young boy, Cunningham got to go to church with his evangelist mother “more often than [he] wanted to”, and can remember hats that would “stop a preacher in the middle of a sermon.”

   While working as a corporate photographer, Cunningham began working on Crowns as a personal project. Over the next few years, Cunningham photographed over fifty different women, cataloging and recording their experiences and wisdom as they came and went.

   The current exhibition at HCC is truly a sight to behold. The solemn, yet powerful, portraits are able to capture the eye and stir the mind in vivid black and white.

“Professor Darryl Myles presents his copy of “Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats” signed by author/photographer Michael Cunningham.”

   Cunningham chose to shoot in black and white because he felt “color would take away from the woman and the hat together”; his aim was not the hat itself, but the woman underneath: her life, her thoughts, and the reason she wears her hat like a crown. For some, it is a shield; protecting her from the world around her.

    For others, it is a status symbol or a sign of freedom. Whatever the reason, be it a connection to roots or religion or an escape from the routine, every woman is a queen with a crown. Each queen wears her crown and follows her own rules. Each queen has her “hattitude” and the hat she wears does not stylize her, she stylizes the hat.

   Michael Cunningham’s published photography book of the same name has sold over 120 thousand copies worldwide; has been featured on the Today Show, CBS’ Sunday Morning, and NPR; and has been adapted into a stage play that became the number one produced musical play in America in 2005.

   The book is available wherever books are sold. The exhibit at HCC Dale Mabry exhibit is located mid-campus, in the second floor of the Learning Resource Center – north of the Social Science Building and will show until February 29th.