Laura Noel in PHOTONEWS

Laura Noel, Atlanta-based Southern Photographer to Watch Out For, has published work from her Deliver Me, portraits of smokers Portfolio in the May 2010 issue of PHOTONEWS, a German fine art photography magazine. 

Her work is featured in an article about the magazine's discoveries of strong new work at Houston's FotoFest.

Laura has an uncanny ability to capture the gestures and postures and situations of contemporary life in the South.

This work documents a profound change in Southern culture, at least in the upper South, where the growing of tobacco and the production and consumption of cigarettes has defined and supported large portions of Southern culture for generations.

Working-class Southerners defined their lives around the growing of tobacco and the rhythm of the seasons of working tobacco, culminating in the annual trip to the tobacco auction that made the difference between austerity and comfort for the year ahead. Wealthier Southerners used the profits of tobacco to build mansions and to fund institutions like Duke University and Wake Forest University.

Now, as Laura documents, Southern smokers of all classes and backgrounds cluster together at the margins of life in the New South.