"Basketball Goal on Farmhouse Wall with Winged Sumac and Poison Ivy" by Thad Lee
by Davis Coen, all photos and captions by Thad Lee
For more than a year, photographer Thad Lee returned again and again to Greenfield Farm, documenting the historic landscape through every season before it begins a new chapter as a writer’s residency. The result is Unvanquished Soil, an exhibition that captures not only the beauty of William Faulkner‘s former mule farm, but also a rare moment in its long history when the property still bore the marks of decades of quiet change.
The first subjects I came upon when entering the property were utility poles. Their wires stretched across a small soybean field and rose along a hilly path that the power company cut through the woods. They were not connected to Greenfield Farm, though a dead powerline drooped across the trail near the farmhouse. These poles by the entrance served as a reminder of the outside world that seemed to vanish as I entered the walkway and approached the corn crib.
On this day, the sky was a deep pink, almost purple, that turned the utility poles blue.
On Tuesday, July 21, Lee discussed that work during the University Museum‘s Summer Brown Bag Series, offering visitors an opportunity to learn more about the photographs and the process behind them. His presentation coincided with the continuing exhibition at the museum, where Unvanquished Soil invites viewers to experience Greenfield Farm through the changing light, weather and rhythms of an entire year.
The lunchtime presentation offered Lee an opportunity to discuss not only the artistic process behind the exhibition, but also the deeply personal experience of returning to the historic property time and again, watching it change with the weather, the light and the passage of time. One of Thad’s goals was to reflect on the work featured in Unvanquished Soil and his experience documenting Greenfield Farm over four seasons before the landscape enters a new chapter in its history.
Greenfield Farm occupies a unique place in Mississippi‘s literary heritage. William Faulkner purchased the property in 1938 after selling the film rights to his novel The Unvanquished to MGM Studios. Decades after falling into decline following the Nobel Prize-winning author’s death, the farm is now being transformed into the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency through the efforts of Mississippi Lab, led by John T. Edge and Mary Wise Conaway. Before that transformation should begin, Lee was commissioned to create a lasting visual record of the property as it exists today.
In an interview Faulkner explained that “in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times.”
This photograph was taken on my twentieth visit to the farm. My goal was to follow the light. It led me off the walkway to the soybean field, where treetops bathed in orange sunshine. I waited for the light to reach the ground.
Rather than making occasional visits, Lee immersed himself in the landscape throughout 2025. Recently, he explained that he photographed the farm at least four times during each season, intentionally returning at dawn, in afternoon light, at dusk and during dramatic weather events – including after a snowfall – to capture the property’s changing moods. The result was thousands of images documenting not only the landscape itself but also the subtle rhythms of time.
Selecting the photographs for public display became an extensive collaborative process involving Edge, Conaway and University Museum curator Melanie Antonelli. From thousands of photographs, only twenty-four images were chosen for the University Museum exhibition, while another twenty were selected for the companion exhibition at Gammill Gallery. Lee also wrote individual captions for each photograph, blending personal observations with historical research.
That writing process, he admitted, carried its own pressures.
Because the exhibition is rooted in Faulkner’s legacy and includes an introduction by former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, Lee wanted the accompanying text to meet the same high standard as the photographs themselves. He credits the guidance of Antonelli, Edge and Conaway for helping shape both the visual presentation and the written narrative.
While the photographs document barns, fields, creeks and remnants of rural life, Lee says the project became much more than a landscape study.
Fall at Greenfield Farm brought relief from the summer heat. The walkway and routes through the woods became more manageable. Biting bugs were less of a presence. The lush foliage that dominated the landscape surrendered to the shorter days and cooling temperatures. The leaves of deciduous trees changed from green to red, orange, and yellow. The farm’s isolation created a brilliant quiet that locked me into the environment. I experienced the seasonal changes emotionally like a drama, like entertainment.
He describes Greenfield Farm as a place where time itself became the central subject. Each visit revealed something different, whether through changing vegetation, shifting light or seasonal weather. Located beside Puskus Creek within the Holly Springs National Forest, the farm offered an isolation that allowed him to become fully immersed in the natural progression of the year.
“I experienced the changes in the landscape emotionally,” Lee explained, describing the unfolding seasons almost like a dramatic story. Yet that beauty carried a sense of urgency, knowing the property would soon be transformed into a writers residency. The photographs therefore preserve not only what Greenfield Farm looked like, but also a fleeting moment before permanent change arrives.
That awareness also shapes the exhibitions themselves. At the University Museum, Unvanquished Soil: A Year at Greenfield Farm presents the images in seasonal order, emphasizing the passage of time. A companion exhibition at Gammill Gallery arranges photographs geographically while incorporating historic images by Martin J. Dain, archival documents and plans for the future residency, connecting the property’s past with its future.
For visitors who visit the exhibit, the photographs become more than beautiful landscapes. They represent the final visual record of a historic place before it evolves into a new center for writers and artists – and encourage deeper appreciation for the history of Faulkner’s old mule farm and the vision guiding its future.
In 1949, MGM adapted Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust into a motion picture. Four scenes were filmed at Greenfield Farm, including one at Puskus Creek, where a murdered boy is pulled out of quicksand.
Puskus Creek is about eleven miles long. Like Greenfield Farm, the creek is part of the Holly Springs National Forest. Its name comes from a Choctaw word that means “baby”. Branches of Puskus Creek snaked across the east side of the property and were fed by underground springs. This photograph was taken on a rainy day. Moss and Christmas ferns added rich greens to the winter landscape.
In many ways, Unvanquished Soil is both a celebration and a farewell. It preserves the character of Greenfield Farm at a singular moment in its long history while honoring the people working to ensure that the property continues inspiring creativity for generations to come. As Lee noted, the photographs will eventually become part of the writer’s residency itself, returning to the very landscape that inspired them.
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