The Humours of Folly
Photographs by Frank Melvin Braden
Words by Ellie Maas Davis

Photography – Art – Non-fiction
224 pages (Hardcover with jacket)
ISBN: 9780981873572

Folly Beach, South Carolina – with all it quirks and warts, its stretch marks and beauty marks, its playful goofiness, its dark underbelly – is the inspiration behind The Humours of Folly.

The ancient theories of the bodily humours – black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood – tie to the elements of the earth, seasons of the year and the many moods of human expression. These serve as the construct for this photographic jaunt by Texas photographer Frank Melvin Braden. His images are mated with a poetic narrative by Charleston writer Ellie Maas Davis. Photographer and writer both turned up rocks, stirred the pluff mud and spent considerable time with some of Folly’s finest characters to unearth stories told in pictures and words.

Writes Davis, “Weather beaten, brow beaten, beloved, she is also a work in progress – a finger-painted masterpiece. Known in modern times as the workingman’s beach, a rich man’s paradise, a surfer’s challenge and a shagger’s haven, she is a clearinghouse of the authentic and inauthentic. … Filled with imagination, Folly has an inconstant shoreline and many moods.”

Praise for The Humours of Folly:

“Ellie Davis's words and Frank Braden's pictures capture the edgy poetry of Folly Beach. A must have for the beach-bum in all of us. ”

RICHARD GARCIA,Pushcart Prize winner, National Endowment for the Arts fellow, author of numerous books including, The Flying Garcias

“Davis and Braden capture perfectly the wild swing of Folly Beach from sordid to sublime and back.  Braden's lens adores every still life, portrait and landscape, revealing with exuberance and skill the gutter in all its glory, the splendor of the vanishing moment. Davis's captions range from concise revelatory histories to a luminous poetry, giving us a grasp of the paradox of our dirty silk rag of a Folly, falling into the ocean through our fingers. ”

KATHERINE WILLIAMS, author of four chapbooks including, Craniogylph: A Memoir in Verse. Williams also surfs 6th Street and does marine microbial ecology research at Hollings Marine Lab not far from Folly Beach

“Frank Braden's extraordinary photographs artfully capture both the eccentricity and beauty of Folly Beach and its people. ”

JACK ALTERMAN, photographer, Cornices of Charleston; founder of the Charleston Center for Photography

“Frank Braden's photographs of Folly Beach exude a sense of whimsy and of the ephemeral moment as defined through light, wind and waves. They celebrate the beach not only as a place of freedom and fun, but also of contemplation and solitude. … Braden's images help define why life "on the edge" is a capsule metaphor for so much that is profoundly human. ”

TOM BLAGDEN, fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers; photographer, Lowcountry: The Natural Landscape; The ACE Basin; The Rivers of South Carolina; and First Light: Acadia National Park

“Braden hits you over the head with color … more often than not [his photographs] are full of humorous observations on life. … He focuses on quiet and often elegant landscapes and [has a] penchant for whimsy.”

JOE FARACE, Shutterbug

“I am struck with the text of this beautiful book. In boxes we find prose pieces which show us historical and anecdotal elements of Folly. They alone make fascinating reading, even for those of us who think they already know the island. But among the essays, there is other text: poetry which brings up the quiet-turbulent-celebratory elements of our psyche … Here the lines are not captions for the pictures; they are moments of meditation where image by image, line by line, silence by silence we say, “’Yes. True of Folly but also true of me, my own soul.’ ”

PAUL ALLEN, winner of the Pushcart and Vassar Miller awards; author, American Crawl; The Small Penis Oratorio and Ground Forces.

Click here to read reviews of "The Humours of Folly"